After deciding which criteria a capstone course in a speech communication department should meet, faculty at West Texas A&M University decided to designate SCOM 401, Introduction to Rhetorical Criticism, as the capstone course. It is offered fall semester every year for juniors or seniors, and students are required to present their final…

The Urban Planning Practicum is a capstone course engaging Michigan State students in urban outreach, working with community organizations on neighborhood revitalization. It facilitates the experiential learning needs of urban planning students while assisting Extension staff in capacity building. Faculty-extension agent partnerships make it…

A yearlong senior experience course requires teams of business students to solve real problems for organizations in the community. Students enhanced responsibility, confidence, and organizational skills. Problems centered on differentiating the course from internships and improving staffing. Students had problems with group dynamics, team…

In capstone business strategy courses, a large-scale simulation organized student teams into "corporations" that prepared functional and integrative deliverables. Data from 502 students supported the effectiveness of large-scale simulation in helping students recognize the importance of integrating functional knowledge and developing an…

From 1992 through 2003 the Chemical Engineering program at Arizona State offered an integrated series of core courses that taught students how conservation and accounting principles can be applied to describe engineering phenomena across disciplines. A brine-water mixing tank experiment was introduced in the third course in the series (ECE 394C:…

Three Web-based case studies for use in capstone chemical engineering design courses have been developed. Supporting materials have been developed for each case study, including a problem statement, an exemplary solution, and a summary of the difficulties and typical errors that might be encountered. This paper will review the course structure and…

The Communication and Theatre Arts Department at Heidelberg College (a private liberal arts college in northwestern Ohio) developed a departmental assessment plan. The department faculty began by working to establish "exit criteria" during an all-day meeting. Unlike other disciplines, communication has no standardized tests and…

A capstone course, entitled "Coordinating Seminar," has been developed at Rivier College, a small Roman Catholic liberal arts college in New England, as a vehicle for assessment in the Psychology Department. Assessment has been defined by Rivier College as a collegewide effort to document and verify the amount and quality of educational change in…

Designing a senior seminar as a "capstone" course for English majors provided an educator the opportunity to devise a course that might provide the majors and anyone who teaches the course an experience of what Paulo Freire calls "liberatory education." According to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education…

The closeness of the 2000 presidential election clearly demonstrated that the country was divided philosophically and politically. The authors of this paper, a speech communication professor and a political science professor at Westminster College in Missouri, capitalized on that division based upon their diametrically opposed political views by…

Examines a capstone class at Virginia Tech that focuses on the role science and scientists play in the process of natural resource management. Connects such curricula with the development of scientific literacy. (Contains 36 references.) (DDR)

Outlines the objectives of a capstone business policy and strategy course; the use of case analysis, article critiques, storytelling, and computer simulation; and contextual factors in matching objectives and methods. (SK)

In January 1986, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) issued several recommendations with far-reaching implications for Virginia's colleges and universities, namely, "that all state-supported institutions of higher education establish procedures and programs to measure student achievement." By all accounts the…

A study determined which activities in a capstone course were perceived to be the most beneficial to course completers with regard to their first professional position after graduation. It also compared the quality of selected capstone activities to other junior/senior level courses in the College of Agriculture at Iowa State University. A random…

Discusses the value of a capstone course in applied sociology as the culmination of the undergraduate sociology curriculum. Points out advantages of joint faculty-student projects for the course and presents the relative merits of two different formats: solo versus team projects. (Author/GEA)