Undergraduate Capstone Course Research Articles

Integrating the Grand Challenges for social work into an undergraduate capstone course

ABSTRACT Over the last decade, social work has focused on identifying widespread societal problems that should drive research, teaching, and practice in the coming years. There are very few scholarly articles about the integration of the Grand Challenges into curricula, despite reports that about half of social work academic institutions have done so. This study provides pre-post data from a cohort of social work students who focused their undergraduate capstone experiences on the Grand Challenges. The vast majority of undergraduate social work students were initially unaware of the Grand Challenges. Students felt that they had significantly more perceived competence to address almost all of the Grand Challenges at the end of the course. There was increased interest in addressing smart decarceration. Integration of the Grand Challenges into undergraduate curricula should occur, especially as social workers prioritize work on restorative justice and mass incarceration.

Incorporating a REIT Module to an Undergraduate Capstone Course: An Experiential Education Approach

This paper describes the pedagogical approach of incorporating a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) module in an undergraduate finance major capstone course at Florida Gulf Coast University, a regional comprehensive 4-year university. The module consists of two class periods and requires research of publicly-traded REITs using industry accepted sources of data, empirical and qualitative data analysis, and preparation of written and oral presentations that receive academic and practitioner feedback. The assignment aligns with experiential learning theory and the constructivism learning theory found in research in that it incorporates experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and active learning combined with the participation of guest speakers and judges who serve as external validators enhancing the student classroom experience.

A Comparison of Three Capstones: Survey Results from Sociology Alumni

Undergraduate capstone courses in sociology are designed to integrate students’ knowledge in the discipline and to culminate the classroom experience with field application. Are capstones achieving these goals in a durable way? Although the short-term outcomes of capstone courses have been researched, fewer studies have documented the long-term outcomes of capstone courses. We conducted a survey of sociology capstone alumni to understand the long-term outcomes of the sociology capstone by asking sociology alumni about their capstone experience. Our research revealed that all capstones produced long-term outcomes as measured in the alumni survey. Second, alumni of the community-based research capstone experienced a more profound and longer reaching effect than those who participated in the internship or traditional capstone seminar format. Alumni reported the development of professional skills, application of sociological concepts and research skills, and a sense of being part of a community.

A Guide to Using the Synthetic Control Method to Quantify the Effects of Shocks, Policies, and Shocking Policies

Governments introduce various policies intending to improve the overall economy or to influence individual behavior. However, estimating the causal impact of these policies is challenging. I describe how the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) can be used in undergraduate econometrics or capstone courses to estimate the impact of economic policies. The SCM is a data-driven design that provides a systematic way of constructing a comparison group that looks very similar to the group implementing the policy. Thus, it allows us to estimate the policy’s impact by comparing the outcome variable’s post-policy path between the policy group and the comparison group. I review a broad range of policies and events that are analyzed using this method, briefly describe the theory behind the method, discuss various best practices, and provide a step-by-step implementation guide using the adoption of a value-added tax (VAT) by France as an example. JEL Classifications: C01, A1, A2

Advocating for Sustainability: A Report on and Critique of the Undergraduate Capstone Course

ABSTRACTThe authors provide an overview of what capstone courses do by presenting information from across the field based on materials received from and interviews with technical and professional communication program administrators and faculty. The authors then point to opportunities to improve the course. Finally, the authors argue for sustainable program development as the theoretical framework to perform programmatic work.

A Capstone Experience: Impacts of a Behavioral Style Learning Unit on Soft Skill Development and Team Dynamics

The integration of hard and soft skills has become increasingly important to employers. Colleges of agriculture and natural sciences can facilitate the development of these skills in their students. The purpose of this study was to explore impacts of a behavioral style learning unit on soft skill development with 15 students enrolled in a senior-level undergraduate capstone course. The research objectives were to (a) explore students’ preflections and reflections for indications of soft skill development, (b) explore team dynamics, and (c) identify best practices for integrating a behavioral style learning unit into a capstone course. Qualitative content analysis methods and basic quantitative methods were used to examine the preflections and reflections of the students. Students found the behavioral assessment improved understanding of their own behavioral needs, and allowed them to flex their style to meet the needs of team members. Relationship compatibility, based on behavioral styles within teams, correlated with the ability of team members to accurately perceive their contributions to tasks, relative to peer-based perceptions of contributions. Based on these results, it is recommended that a behavioral style learning unit, or a similar psychological type unit, be integrated into courses where soft skills are a desired student learning outcome.

Conceptual change in natural resource management students’ ecological literacy

Conceptual change in undergraduate capstone courses provides unique opportunities to examine how students draw from multiple courses and experiences to resolve conceptual confusion. We examined how senior-level natural resource management students revised their conceptions of ‘ecosystem’ throughout their capstone course. The concept of ecosystem is complicated by a lack of shared meaning across disciplines. Our grounded theory study analyzed student coursework and pre/post interviews. It was informed by socio-cultural and conceptual change theories and used an ecological literacy metric to examine how students’ conceptualizations of the relationships between natural, ecosystem, human, and human artifact influenced their conceptions of ecosystems. Students who did not describe ecosystems as natural struggled less with integrating human society into ecosystems than their peers that did. We conclude that it is important to explicitly create shared meaning of key conceptions at the start of a capstone course to facilitate shared meaning-making and desired conceptual change during the course.

Student Perceptions Concerning their Experience in a Flipped Undergraduate Capstone Course

Flipped learning is an innovative approach to teaching at the post-secondary level. Traditional methods of initial delivery of curricular content occur before a face-to-face class session. Students must prepare before attending class, as the majority of face-to-face class sessions are utilized for applying curricular content to complex problems. A specific application of flipped learning, TeamBased Learning holds students accountable for the pre-class preparation via an individual test, as well as to their peers via a team test. Students engage and discuss curricular content on the team test as well as application exercises, which are rigorously designed activities aimed at increasing cognitive skills of the students. This study sought to determine student’s perceptions of a recently adopted, atypical teaching approach, known as Team-Based Learning in the Iowa State University capstone farm management course (AgEdS 450). Post-course quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Overall student perceptions were positive and supported the adoption of a studentcentered course design. It is recommended that dedicated training workshops be developed for faculty members within Colleges of Agriculture that focus on student-centered instruction. Further examination of Team-Based Learning in other courses within Colleges of Agriculture, and Agricultural Education courses specifically, is recommended.

Learning Inside-Out: Turning the Outside World into Class with an Eye Towards Sustainability and Well-Being

This session examines emerging "flipped classroom" techniques to promote active learning about sustainability and well-being. First, presenters share a few pedagogical tools for active, mobile learning among sustainability studies practitioners, including a few illustrations for each. These tools include social learning, living laboratories, service learning, and action research. Opportunities to enhance these activities through use of Mason's Patriot Green Fund will also be shared. Presenters will then explore how these tools could be adapted and used to foster learning and practice related to sustainability and well-being across the curricula of session participants.Faculty who desire to enhance their pedagogy through active learning and address real-world community challenges should discover several valuable methods, a few pitfalls, and lots of lessons learned. Applications may span single sessions or entire courses. Those teaching upper-level undergraduate synthesis or graduate capstone courses with a focus on practical scholarship may find this session particularly useful to their teaching.

Taking a Case Method Capstone Course Online: A Comparative Case Study

A capstone course is normally offered at the end of a program of study with the goal of helping students synthesize what they have learned in the courses preceding it. The paper describes such a course—an undergraduate capstone course for MIS majors—that was built around case discussions and projects and originally offered in a face-to-face format. Over the course of the study, an asynchronous online version of the course was developed that was intended to be as faithful as possible to the classroom version. The paper examines the design, delivery, and learning outcomes of the online offering, contrasting it with the classroom version. The transition to an online course required many adaptations. Among the issues that we needed address are the following: 1) moving the highly synchronous face-to-face discussions of each case study to an asynchronous format without losing fidelity and energy, 2) changing how “student participation” was defined and evaluated, 3) adapting the project component of the course—which ended with a very popular “science fair” activity at the end of the semester in the classroom version—to a delivery mechanism where students never interacted with each other face-to-face, and 4) evaluating the relative learning outcomes of the two approaches. The results of the conversion proved to be consistent with some of our expectations and surprising in other ways. Consistent with expectations, the online tools that we employed allowed us to create an online design that was relatively faithful to the original version in terms of meeting learning objectives. Also consistent with our expectations, student perceptions of the course—while quite positive overall—were more mixed for the online course than for its face-to-face predecessor. The course offering produced two surprises, however. First, the online approach to the project component of the course actually seemed to result in higher quality project presentations than the face-to-face version. Second, when results were compared from the instrument we used to evaluate student learning gains, the classroom and online versions of the class proved to be nearly indistinguishable. Given the very different delivery mechanisms employed, we had anticipated far more differences in student perceptions of what they had learned over the course of the semester. Given the challenges of taking a highly interactive class online, we viewed this surprise to be a very pleasant one.

TEACHING CASE COMBINED DISCIPLINE CAPSTONE TEAMS: USING SERVICE LEARNING TO PROVIDE A BUSINESS SOLUTION

Computing faculty from a regional university in Oklahoma implemented a plan to combine undergraduate capstone courses in Management Information Systems (MIS), Computer Science (CS), and Multimedia (MM). The MIS course had been using experiential service learning and completing small database projects for local organizations since 2003. Based on the experiences and contacts of the MIS faculty, a decision was made to conduct an actual business related project. The project chosen was one for the alumni association of a local high school. They required a web presence and wanted something akin to Classmates.com. Originally, the alumni association contracted the project through a local commercial company. However, after one year of trying to get the local company to deliver what was needed, the alumni association contacted the MIS faculty for help in developing the site. The project required an appealing and easy to use front-end interface, a back-end database, and middleware to connect the two. The MIS class was assigned to create the database. The CS class wrote the middleware using PHP with the MIS class assisted with imbedded MySQL statements. The MM class created the front-end user interface. This teaching case presents the experiences, results, and conclusions of the project.

The Impact of Problem-Based Learning on Transferable Skills Development: Students’ Perceptions in a Management Undergraduate Capstone Course

Attention to transferable skills development is growing on the higher education agenda. Problem-based learning (PBL) is also increasingly used in higher education for its promising potential to, among others, promote transferable skills, including problem-solving, critical thinking and teamwork skills. However, few studies have methodically measured this relationship. In this study, structural equation modelling is used to examine the contribution of certain aspects of PBL implementation to its effectiveness, measured through students’ perceptions of satisfaction and skill development. Results show that skill development is predicted by interaction with the tutor and with the host company, and defining teamwork rules. Satisfaction is predicted by skill development as well as factors relating to assessment, defining rules and understanding how organizations work. Conclusions and recommendations are drawn.

A Capstone Course on Agile Software Development Using Scrum

In this paper, an undergraduate capstone course in software engineering is described that not only exposes students to agile software development, but also makes it possible to observe the behavior of developers using Scrum for the first time. The course requires students to work as Scrum Teams, responsible for the implementation of a set of user stories defined by a project domain expert playing the role of the Product Owner. During the course, data on project management activities are collected in order to analyze the amount of work completed, compliance with the release and iteration plans, productivity, ability in effort estimation, and the like. The paper discusses the achievement of teaching goals and provides empirical evaluation of students' progress in estimation and planning skills. A summary of lessons learned and recommendations is given, reflecting the issues to be considered when teaching courses in agile software development. Surveys of students have shown that they were overwhelmingly positive about the course, indicating that the course fully met or even exceeded their expectations.

Senior Project Design Success and Quality: A Systems Engineering Approach

The capstone project, in most undergraduate engineering programs is the final phase of an academic career. It allows students to take knowledge acquired through the program and apply it to an innovative industry or research project. A well designed senior project affords the student the opportunity to demonstrate the skills and to model the behaviour, which are inherent in the education goals of the program. Most capstone projects focus on technical skills but soft skills oftentimes are not built into the experience. During the past three years we have observed that a significant amount of Sr. Design teams in our Electrical Engineering (EE) department do not complete the projects in a timely manner. We find that lack of technical knowledge is rarely the cause; more often the causes include lack of communication skills, lack of experience in organizing work in a team environment, and a bias towards focusing on the device level at the expense of having a clear, high level end-to-end view of the project. This paper describes our efforts to address these gaps through the incorporation of Systems Engineering disciplines into our undergraduate capstone course in EE and our results so far; thus, leading to more qualitative, competitive and successful projects.

Applied Experimental Psychology: A Capstone Course for Undergraduate Psychology Degree Programs

Learning-by-doing and a transgenerational educational format are incorporated into a semesterlong undergraduate capstone course. The goal of the course is to provide students with an understanding of the fundamentals of applied experimental psychology (e.g., applications of methods), and using that understanding in the context of design. Students participate in seminarstyle class meetings and a weekly laboratory meeting. Every class meeting is devoted to discussing a reading assignment related to the fundamentals of aging, as well as a breadth of applied experimental psychology domains. The students are encouraged to engage in collaborative discussion to critique the main points of the reading. In the laboratory, each student learns about and applies human factors methods. The students work in teams and develop a project in which they apply their fundamental knowledge of experimental psychology to the domain of successful aging. Each team develops or redesigns a technology, device, or environment to aid o...

The Accounting Undergraduate Capstone: Promoting Synthesis, Reflection, Transition, and Competencies

The authors review 24 midwestern institutions that have an undergraduate capstone course. Specifically they focus on accounting capstone courses, discovering that these are used to promote personal and functional skill development in 8 areas: research, problem solving, critical thinking, reflection, synthesis, teamwork, communication, and professional orientation. These skills are targeted as they prepare students to enter the accounting profession and make connections with the business environment. These skills track closely with the competencies identified in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Core Competency Framework.

Nascent Leadership Behaviors

This paper is a compendium of leadership behaviors that emerging or aspirant leaders could choose to enhance their management and leadership skills. These behaviors were drawn directly from the experience of the authors, both of whom have held senior leadership and management positions in business, law, and higher education. This paper is an outgrowth of more than a decade of experience in teaching leadership in graduate MBA programs and in undergraduate business policy and strategy capstone courses. MBA programs typically have a dedicated course on leadership and undergraduate capstone courses focus on leadership, business policy and strategy. Normally course material is presented through case studies, readings and lectures on leadership and leadership theory. Most, although not all, students have limited or no management experience and they hope to advance their management and leadership skills which they believe should in turn result in their career success. During our years of teaching leadership, many students asked the authors about specific leadership actions they could utilize in their nascent business careers. The material presented in this paper is oriented towards practical and actionable steps that the aspiring leader can decide to apply with the caveat that common sense and sensitivity to the individual circumstances will vary greatly. However, sooner or later the right time to distinguish oneself will surely occur and that the behaviors presented in this paper can be of value to entry and junior level managers.

An Integrative Undergraduate Capstone Course on the Unconscious

Theories and research related to the unconscious can be found in every area of psychology, but there is no course devoted to the topic in the undergraduate curriculum. A capstone course on the unconscious is described. The course integrates topics across the major fields of psychology. Themes in the course include the existence of mental processes that individuals are not aware of, do not have access to, and are not able to control, and how these processes lead to efficiency and confabulation. Course topics related to these themes are organized into subsections including why psychology needs the unconscious, psychodynamic theories, the modern unconscious, and consciousness and free will. Suggestions are made for course readings, assignments, and activities.

‘Killing Two Birds with One Stone’: Using Rubrics to Make the Grading and Assessment of Political Science Capstones Easier

In many academic departments around the country, the “a” word can be a dirty one, whether it is in a political science department or not. While there are some colleagues who recognize the benefits of assessment – that “a” word – there are still others who ask, “Why is assessment necessary? Won’t grades do the same thing?” In academic departments, it is important to recognize that these divisions about assessment can exist. If we truly want entire departments to buy into assessment, it can be beneficial for those who believe in it to make other colleagues not only see the benefits of assessment, but to show how assessment can be easily woven into the curriculum and courses. By doing this, no longer does assessment have to be done twice – once to teach/grade the class and the other for assessment. But in order to accomplish this, political science departments should invest in rubrics, or grading sheets, so they cannot only achieve their teaching and curricular goals, but also make assessment and grading as easy as possible. This essay demonstrates one such plan by looking at how assessment and grading with rubrics were embedded into two different aspects of the political science curriculum, the undergraduate capstone course and the capstone aspects of the graduate program. This essay blends together three separate areas of scholarly work in political science: assessment, capstones, and grading rubrics

The Undergraduate Capstone Course in the Social Sciences

Among the common requirements for receipt of a degree in the social sciences is the completion of a senior seminar in which a senior thesis or capstone project is produced. A number of educational goals have been proposed for this requirement: integrating the knowledge base supplied by the regular curriculum, contributing to students’ future roles as informed citizens, and preparing for study in graduate programs, among others. However, few studies have empirically explored the substance of the senior seminars and capstones offered across a discipline or studied their organization, requirements, and pedagogy. In the present article, the authors describe the results of a survey of sociology and psychology departments in the western United States regarding their senior seminar and capstone courses.