Capstone Units Research Articles

Benefits of the project model capstone: Key experience themes for journalism students

Capstone units are culminating experiences typically offered in the final semester of a tertiary degree. Capstones are common across higher education, and are increasingly being offered in university journalism programs. However, there is no consensus about the most effective capstone for journalism. At least three models have been identified: the project, the newsroom simulation and the internship. While traditionally popular, the newsroom simulation and internship models have certain limitations, some of which have become more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journalism educators see merit in the project model but it is not widely used. To date, there has been a lack of research about how journalism students respond to the various capstone options. The study presented here makes a contribution to this field by describing graduating students’ feedback about a new project model capstone unit offered through an Australian journalism undergraduate program. It describes some of the key themes to emerge from survey responses from three cohorts of graduating students. The project experience was found to enhance both tradecraft and transferable ‘life skills’, and helped many students feel more prepared to enter the workforce. The project shows significant promise as a valid alternative capstone experience for journalism students.

World-ready: A Journalism Capstone Unit Model with International Focus in a Pandemic and Post-pandemic Landscape

In assessing the literature to date, in the field of journalism capstone units, there is an absence of research on the potential of Australian journalism capstone units that help cultivate journalism students’ international networks through new media platforms. I argue that there is a need for an Australian journalism capstone unit that focuses on a global vision for post-programme work opportunities in a radically changed and digitally driven global landscape, which does not rely on physical travel. This is especially pertinent for students in the Australian communications network, which has a legacy tradition of insularity that is cultivated by geographical isolation. This factor has also become more pertinent in the wake of COVID-19 travel restrictions.

Student responses to a new project model capstone unit in journalism

Tertiary educators across the globe are trying to identify the best way for students to complete their studies in a unit that synthesizes learning to date and prepares them to enter the workforce. The final unit, or capstone, has increasingly emerged as a key issue in higher education in recent years, and is the subject of a growing body of research. However, researchers have not reached consensus about the most suitable model for a capstone unit. The absence of a uniform approach is pronounced within the field of journalism education, where capstone units are not universal and a number of models are being used. In Australia, research has found that most undergraduate journalism programmes include a capstone unit, but that there are three models: the internship, the newsroom simulation and the project. The aim here is not to argue that one model is more effective than and preferable to others. Instead, this study contributes to the capstone literature by outlining student responses to a new project model capstone unit for journalism undergraduates at a Western Australian university. It evaluates the unit’s effectiveness against the stated purposes and principles of a capstone experience, and concludes that the project can achieve the dual aims of enhancing disciplinary skills and developing broader transferable abilities.

Developing a generic review framework to assure capstone quality

ABSTRACTWithin the higher education context, capstone units can be viewed as a significant means of assuring intended learning outcomes for programmes. They provide students with the opportunity to consolidate and apply prior and new disciplinary learning, as well as employability skills and graduate attributes. This paper describes the first stage of an initiative in a regional, Australian university to develop a capstone quality review framework that can be applied across disciplines. A deductive, thematic analysis of relevant literature, guides and institutional strategic documents using a constant comparison method was used to develop a collectively agreed upon set of capstone quality domains and related criteria. These would enable reviewers to assess whether capstone curricula were fit-for-purpose. Capstone domains and criteria were validated and revised using a multi-stage, moderated review of 10 capstone units. This validation process affirmed that to avoid issues with reviewer inter-rater reliability, future use of our framework should emphasise calibrating reviewer interpretation to ensure greater levels of shared understanding of underlying concepts. It further suggested the desirability of incorporating aspects of teacher self-assessment, teacher feedback and student results. Provided these findings are accounted for, we conclude that the proposed capstone review domains and criteria could be used for quality review and enhancement, or capstone benchmarking processes, regardless of discipline area.

Journalism capstone units based on agreed principles and standards

The concept of capstone units is gaining currency within the Australian Higher Education system, with a growing focus on enhancing graduate employability and assuring graduate outcomes. The aim of this paper is to report on an 18-month study of undergraduate journalism capstone units in Australian universities. Just over half of the universities in Australia that teach journalism (16 out of 30), embed capstone units in their programmes, and the study, which began in September 2015, is part of part of an Australian Learning and Teaching Fellowship. It is divided into three stages. The first stage involved face-to-face interviews with journalism academics at 16 universities in five States, to discover what type of capstone unit they use, the principles they employ and the skills students need to demonstrate and apply. This data then underwent a validation process. Stage three of the study will develop resources to support journalism educators in the design or redesign of capstone units, especially in the area of agreed principles, standards and best practice.

Designing Journalism Capstone Units That Demonstrate Student Skills

There are considerable differences in the structure, content, and delivery of tertiary journalism degrees in Australia as identified in a 2014 Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) Innovation and Development Project report on graduate qualities and journalism curriculum renewal. To address this situation, the author argues for journalism capstone units, designed by both journalism educators and news editors, to include a series of agreed criteria and standards to guide journalism educators, and for journalism students to demonstrate not only a broad knowledge base together with research and communication skills but also entrepreneurial skills to help them adapt to new media markets and jobs.

Pre-service Teachers’ Perceptions of Authentic Learning in a Capstone Unit

Capstone units in higher education courses are learning experiences which are designed to bring reflection and focus to a whole course of study while, at the same time, leading students toward their entry into a new world of work (Humphrey, Brown, & Benson, 2005). The capstone experience described in this paper runs as a conference, called the Stepping Out Conference. The conference is delivered as one unit and is mandatory for all fourth year pre-service teachers. Participation in a capstone unit is an effective way for students to begin thinking of themselves as teaching professionals rather than as continuing students. Students engage in the assessment as part of their capstone experience. The assessment is designed to measure students’ knowledge and skills as they relate to ‘authentic’ real life situations (Darling-Hammond, 1991). This paper details pre-service teachers’ experiences of authentic learning through their participation in a capstone unit.

The Postgraduate Capstone Experience: Negotiating the Pedagogical Tensions

<p>In designing a capstone experience, legal educators may encounter a number of tensions between competing pedagogical imperatives and conflicting capstone principles. Should we focus on teaching content or should we focus on developing skills? Should we emphasise integration and consolidation of knowledge, or transition and the development of professional identity? Should we encourage specialisation of knowledge and skills or should we be offering a broader view that takes account of context and diversity? This article considers how these tensions may be revealed, negotiated and managed, using a case study of a postgraduate capstone unit in international law. In doing so, the article adds to the literature on capstone units in law, which has to date focused on the undergraduate experience, and demonstrates that the existing work on capstones can be successfully applied in the postgraduate context. The article further argues that postgraduate units may offer particularly useful vehicles for exposing the pedagogical tensions involved in designing a capstone experience and experimenting with techniques for managing those tensions.</p>

‘Capping off’ the development of graduate capabilities in the final semester unit for biological science students: review and recommendations

Biology is the most rapidly evolving scientific field of the 21st century. Biology graduates must be able to integrate concepts and collaborate outside their discipline to solve the most pressing questions of our time, e.g. world hunger, malnutrition, climate change, infectious disease and biosecurity. University educators are attempting to respond to this need to better prepare undergraduates to face these challenges by undergoing a dramatic shift in teaching practice from teaching-centered to student-centered and from discipline knowledge to graduate capabilities. With this shift came the development of capstone units—a student’s culminating academic experience where authentic learning environments assist students to develop employer-prized capabilities, e.g. metacognition, networking, time management, collaborative skills. The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) launched a new student centered set of science majors in 2012 and in second semester 2015 will offer a capstone in biology for the first time. My main aims with this report are to understand the theoretical basis and logic behind the development of capstone units and to compare and contrast what other Australian institutions are providing. Based on my findings, I recommend six generic elements for capstone units in biological science: 1. Challenging inquiry-based learning tasks that are intentionally ill defined and complicated, and address cutting edge relevant problems. 2. Small group work activities and assessment that encourages positive constructivist learning. 3. Student centered learning where teachers take the role of coaching and mentoring with students also being provided opportunities to network with members of the professional community. 4. Students perform authentic tasks that involve articulating their findings to peers and experts including the experience of having to defend arguments and decisions. 5. Learning opportunities that include career development skills and training. 6. Explicit modeling of self-aware and meaningful learning to encourage deep learning strategies that foster an appreciation for the nature of science. Overall, I found that the characteristics of capstone units should not be focused on transmitting content, nor simply another controlled application of the scientific method; instead the activities and assessment students perform should be complex, relevant, and realistic to encourage students to move beyond being motivated by grades or fear of failure to wanting to understand concepts deeply and solve problems to make a difference within their future professions and communities.

Accountancy capstone: Enhancing integration and professional identity

Capstone units are generally seen to have three main aims: integrating the program, reflecting on prior learning, and transitioning into the workplace. However, research indicates that most programs do not achieve outcomes in all three areas with Henscheid (2000) revealing that integration is the major goal of many capstone programs. As well, in the accounting education literature there has been little empirical evidence relating to the effectiveness of student learning as a result of implementing a capstone unit. This study reports on the development and implementation of an accountancy capstone unit at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which began in 2006. The main features of this capstone unit are: the use of problem-based learning (PBL); integration of the program; the development of a professional identity whereby classes are broken up into groups of a maximum of five students who take on the persona of a professional accounting firm for an entire semester; and the students, acting as professional advisors within that firm, are required to solve a series of unstructured, multi-dimensional accounting problems based on limited given facts. This process is similar to a professional advisor asking a client about the facts relating to the particular problem of the client and then solving the problem. The research was conducted over nine semesters and involved the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data from a student questionnaire. The results indicate that in terms of student perceptions, the capstone unit was very effective in enhancing integration of the program and enhancing professional identity thereby assisting student transition into the professional accounting workplace. Our approach therefore meets two of the three generally accepted aims of a capstone unit. With accounting educators striving to maximise student learning from a finite set of resources, this approach using PBL has resulted in improved learning outcomes for accounting students about to enter the workplace as professionals.

Developing psychological literacy: Student perceptions of graduate attributes

This cross‐sectional study examined student perceptions of psychology graduate attributes (GA) and of psychological literacy (PL), which were expected and found to be significantly related. GA and PL ratings were moderately high, reflecting substantial awareness, perceived development, and perceived importance of these concepts. These perceptions varied as a function of degree programme major and year, and specialist units completed. The general pattern for overall group differences for most GAs, from highest to lowest ratings, was (1) psychology major students who had completed specialist units, (2) psychology major students who had not completed the cornerstone/foundational unit, and (3) non‐major students (who had completed a few non‐specialist psychology units). Where there were significant interactions, students in Condition 1 tended to give consistently higher ratings in all 3 years, while those in Condition 2 showed some increase across the years, and those in Condition 3 gave lower ratings in Year 3 than in earlier years. All students in Condition 1 indicated that they were aware of the term psychological literacy; this was not the case for the other students. Once PL was defined, however, all students rated this concept as important. The limitations of this study, as well as implications for teaching strategies such as cornerstone and capstone units, are considered.

The Changing International Student Environment: Changing the Academic Curriculum in Preparing Business Students for an International Workforce

Integrating the workforce atmosphere into the academic curriculum has always been challenging. Over the past decade this has become even more challenging as 54% of all new enrolling students in our Business Faculty are full fee-paying international students. By developing capstone units at undergraduate and postgraduate levels that bring inter-disciplinary concepts together, it is possible to demonstrate the importance of theory to students and its relationship to the world of work, especially if students recognise that the capstone unit they are completing also simulates an international workplace environment. The capstone units developed consistently exceed the university's aspiration of achieving a median score of 4.70 (outstanding) out of 5.00 for student satisfaction. By emphasising the interaction between disciplinary knowledge and the development of graduate attributes in an applied learning environment, graduates learn to understand the importance of their university degree studies prior to entering the workforce. By developing attributes of research and inquiry, information literacy, ethical and professional understanding, personal and intellectual autonomy and communication they learn to understand the importance of developing their skills as ethical and responsible global citizens who work for the good of the business professions and the international business community. This paper is based on evidence collected in a simulated treasury dealing room at a Group of Eight University in Australia that researched the effectiveness of simulations in improving learning within the accounting and finance discipline and in preparing graduates for the workforce for a future global working environment.