Development and Implementation of a Capstone Experience
Hostos Community College, CUNY
Hostos is currently completing its Institutional Assessment Plan which includes the assessment of general education. Currently, general education assessment is conducted in individual courses. As a way of identifying how students completing their education have attained those general education skills, Hostos is proposing to develop capstone experiences.
The creation of capstone experiences would take several forms. First there are several programs that already have culminating courses. For these courses, capstone assignments would be developed by the faculty teaching those courses, building on existing assignments. In the second group of programs, there may be several courses that students take in their final semesters at the college. For these courses, faculty would again use existing assignments and augment them to become capstone assignments. Finally, for the Liberal Arts programs, there are no specific culminating courses and students have a wide range of interests and goals, a capstone course will be developed.
Why Capstone Experiences?
As a high impact practice (HIP), capstone experiences will provide students with a rich culminating and integrative experience that will synthesize their education at Hostos. Based on information provided by AAC&U, capstones provide deep learning and students gain general, personal and practical knowledge. Further, capstone are academically challenging, provide students active and collaborative learning experiences, and there is also high student-faculty interaction.
In addition, capstone experiences will provide Hostos with a way of assessing the degree to which its graduates have attained the general education competencies, as well as mastered the program learning outcomes for their program. Such information will permit each of the programs and the college to make the necessary and/or appropriate changes to the curriculum to strengthen teaching and learning.
Finally, the assessment of student learning, including general education is a major initiative in the college’s Strategic Plan (the assessment of student learning with a focus on general education). However, because capstones also provide students with experiences that relate to what they will encounter in a senior college, the capstone experience relates to the graduate and transfer initiatives within the Strategic Plan, by helping students acclimate to senior college expectations.
Implementation of Capstone Course:
Capstone experiences will be developed by Hostos Community College. There are three (3) types of experiences: develop a new capstone course (for Liberal Arts); enhance existing courses that typically taken towards the end of a student’s career; create a capstone assignment in the culminating course of the program.
As a pilot Hostos would use programs that have a final culminating course. Three programs, Early Childhood Education (ECE), Criminal Justice, and Dental Hygiene have such courses. ECE has a fieldwork course, CJ has a culminating course that students take in their final term (prior to graduation and transfer to John Jay College), and Dental Hygiene has a final clinical course. Initial concepts are that the capstone assignments would be prompts derived from the college’s general education rubrics (that were adapted from the AAC&U VALUE rubrics) and which relate to the general education competencies embedded in the existing course assignments.
The capstone assignments would also embed other HIPs, especially ones that would facilitate the transfer of these students to four-year colleges (e.g., service learning, undergraduate research, etc.).
Moving forward, Hostos will work with faculty in other programs that do not have a culminating course, but have courses that are typically taken at the end of students’ careers. The development of these capstone experiences will be similar to the development described above.
Finally, because there is no single culminating course or courses for students in the Liberal Arts programs, Hostos will develop a capstone course for these students. Since the Liberal Arts programs are the largest programs in the college, it is crucial that the courses developed can address a range of interests and needs. The development of the capstone course, will require several steps in order to complete: the need to specify the program level outcomes for the Liberal Arts program, the need develop the curriculum for the course, and then to get the course through the governance process, as well as getting faculty buy-in and participation.
To create the Liberal Arts capstone course, in Fall 2013, the General Education Committee will be charged with developing the Liberal Arts Program Outcomes. (As a starting point for their discussions, they will use the Hostos general education competencies and a list of potential program outcomes provided as part of Gordon Uno’s presentation at the HIP Institute.) Concurrently, a faculty committee will be convened and charged with developing the curriculum for the Liberal Arts capstone course, including ensuring that additional HIPs are included in the experience (see above). By the end of the Fall 2013 term, both committees will have completed their work. The curriculum will also include the development of a capstone course template that can be used to develop additional capstones in the future.
Faculty Involvement:
Because the success of the development and implementation of the capstone experience rests with the degree to which faculty become involved and enervated by the project. As part of effort to involve, the faculty, Hostos’ Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) will conduct PDIs on the development of capstone assignments. The PDI will be open to the faculty, the members of the two committees working on the Liberal Arts capstone.
Assessment of the Capstone Experience:
The capstone assignments will be assessed for both program level outcomes and the associated general education outcomes. The program level outcome assessment would be conducted by the faculty from the program. The general education outcomes assessment would be conducted by a team created by the General Education Committee. The assessments of both groups will be done using rubrics.
In addition to the collection of rubric scores, the IR Office will conduct focus groups with students who have participated in the capstone experience. Students will be asked about their experience, the benefits of participating in the capstone, and what they would recommend for future activities and improvements.
The results will be analyzed by the IR Office and reports will be generated that will be shared with the relevant program faculty, Academic Affairs, and the General Education Committee. Because of the need to use the information, the IR Office will follow up with program faculty to identify changes that have been made to the capstone experience (to improve teaching and learning) and the impact of those changes.
Some Examples of Capstone Experiences in Programs with culminating Courses:
· ECE—identify issues or problems observed in your fieldwork experience…how would you address the problem? Who would you involve to help to rectify the problem? What specifically would you recommend be done to correct the problem? What information sources would you use to justify your recommendations?
· Criminal Justice—conduct a substantive literature review and research study that is a policy paper on a topic relating to CJ, such as juvenile justice, recidivism, equality of the justice system, sentencing guidelines, community policing, addressing underlying causes of criminal behavior, capital punishment, etc.
· Business Management—create and pitch a business plan for a new business in a specified area.
· Digital Design & Animation—design a pitch for yourself—consider either a website or a PowerPoint presentation, etc.