capstone course is an ideal place to provide students a culminating experience that thoughtfully integrates everything learned during college to solve complex, real-world problems. This article positions design thinking (DT) as a pedagogical approach that leads students to solve complex problems and
Search Results
David Pierce, Melissa Davies, and Bryan Kryder
Miriam E. Leary, Randy W. Bryner, and Oladipo O. Eddo
. Discussions focus on improving students’ success, learning, and matriculation into the vulnerable first year of college; rigorous teaching and assessment practices for laboratory and lecture classes in core curriculum; and remote capstone opportunities to prepare graduates for a postpandemic workforce. First
Molly Hayes Sauder and Michael Mudrick
. Therefore, the first two research questions of this study are as follows: RQ1: Is there a relationship between students’ satisfaction with capstone internships and perceived learning from capstone internships? RQ2: How much does satisfaction with supervision, duties, work environment, and academic elements
Kim C. Graber, Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, Jamie A. O’Connor, and Jenny M. Linker
Civic engagement and service learning opportunities provide students with unique real-world experiences they are unable to acquire in a traditional in-class setting. Students develop a commitment to the community in which they live, exposure to other populations, leadership abilities, skills to work successfully within a team, and a chance to learn from failure. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has recognized the importance of such opportunities and has added the Community Engagement Classification to the restructured Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of the literature that addresses civic engagement and service learning opportunities and to describe a university class that was designed to provide undergraduate students with a capstone service learning experience promoting wellness for older adults in the community. Data that were collected to evaluate the success of the class are also described.
Lisa G. Johnson and Birgitta L. Baker
Louisiana State University’s School of Kinesiology has partnered with the Dr. Leo S. Butler Community Fitness Center in Baton Rouge, LA since 2003 offering our fitness studies concentration majors a unique service-learning experience. The center is located in a community with citizens battling many health issues, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, with limited access and resources that promote a heathy lifestyle. Students enrolled in a senior capstone course work with the community members in the Sensational Seniors fitness program. This fitness program addresses some of those needs by providing a variety of group exercise sessions promoting overall health and longevity for the participants. Our students are able to apply theoretical concepts learned in lectures and laboratories to address public health concerns in a real-life setting. The students lead group fitness activities, monitor blood pressures, and disseminate appropriate and updated health and exercise information for the seniors.
Steven Wright, Michelle Grenier, and Kathy Channell
The purpose of this descriptive study was to analyze university supervision from the perspective of student teachers (STs), and to examine postlesson conference discourse between STs and university supervisors (USs) to determine if STs perspectives on supervisory models aligned with what actually occurred. Determining STs expectations and desires regarding supervisory model preferences and then providing a forum for STs to comment on the actual university supervision that they experienced fills a void in the literature, as student voice pertaining to this area of university supervision is missing. Data were collected via ST opportunities to answer written questions before and after their capstone experience. A total of 80 postobservation conferences were audio-recorded, transcribed and inductively analyzed to determine conference discourse. Results determined that the 28 STs overwhelmingly (96%) expressed a preference for a collaborative supervision approach, which ultimately they declared they experienced. Word counts revealed that for all postobservation conferences, STs (58%) spoke more often than USs (42%), which suggests that a collaborative model of supervision did actually occur. Analysis of idea units demonstrated that USs asked a lot of questions (31% of all their idea units) and a majority of them (73%) were categorized as higher order—such as reflective or evaluative questions versus lower order questions such as informational questions. This led to a great deal of ST reflection on their lessons during the postobservation conferences.
Isabel Valdez and Ting Liu
, service learning, community-based learning, internships, and capstone courses or projects ( Kuh, 2008 ). The benefits of engaging students in high-impact, undergraduate research-enhancing academic programs have been well explored in the literature. As a partial fulfillment of some of the recommendations
Susan B. Foster and David A. Pierce
academic coursework is plagued with operational challenges such as course sequencing and scaffolding, ensuring instructors align course content to student learning outcomes, and coordinating field experiences for students across the spectrum of volunteer, practicum, internship, and capstone experiences
Mark Urtel, Sara F. Michaliszyn, and Craig Stiemsma
internship. For this reason, placing the internship toward the end of the curriculum tends to be a common practice. In fact, for both IUPUI and Youngstown State University, the internship is a true capstone course taken at the end of a student’s plan of study with only limited course work not completed
Ryan Snelgrove and Laura Wood
. Instructors of capstone courses at the undergraduate or graduate level will appreciate the breadth of the case, whereas undergraduate course instructors of strategic management or research methods may choose to focus on one of the problem spaces. Students are challenged to go beyond the case to acquire data
