Comments on the Capstone Course

Abstract

Reform of the college curriculum acquired social movement status in the mid to late 1980s. Although most of the attention focused on changing general education (see Gaff 1991), some critics also noted the need to revise the major. Foremost among these was the Association of American Colleges (AAC). Its report, Integrity in the College Curriculum (1985), concluded that because of the nature of existing majors, are being short-changed, denied the intellectual experiences that will enable them to comprehend their world and to live in it freely, courageously, happily, and responsibly (p. 27). Similarly Boyer (1987) observed that education in many majors has become narrow and specialized, skills have become ends (p. 110), and graduating students are technicians instead of liberally educated adults with an understanding of the whole. These critical assessments also provided some general prescriptions for a cure. Boyer called for an enriched major that responds to three essential questions: is the history and tradition of the field to be examined? What are the social and economic implications to be understood? What are the ethical and moral issues to be confronted? (1987, p. 110). Integrity in the College Curriculum suggested that majors should have the following features: a central core of method and theory, a structure that forces students to experience the range of topics addressed by the discipline, a sequence that assumes advancing sophistication, and a final project or thesis that provides the student with a means to demonstrate mastery of the area's complexity (AAC 1985, p. 29). This last item referred to what soon came to be called the experience. Many departments have accepted the essential idea that to culminate their undergraduate career, students need an experience different from merely taking another course. Spurred by the AAC Sociology Task Force Report, many sociology departments tried to develop such curricular experiences. Faculty members assigned to teach the capstone course, however, soon discover that beyond the general agreement regarding desirability, individual instructors define goals of capstone courses differently and that almost no materials are available to aid in designing and teaching such a course.