Type of Powerful Assessment - Capstone

 

Business

  • Capstone –briefing from a client on a real-world business challenge and the group provides the suggested solutions and ways to implement them, with attention to existing research, feasibility and relevance. Assessment is a report with the criteria including accuracy of diagnosis of client needs, feasibility and relevance of the solution, appropriate use of what has been learnt in the course and the quality of group work.

(Cap)

 

  • Portland State Senior Capstone 'Capstone courses are designed by Portland State University's faculty to build cooperative learning communities by taking students out of the classroom and into the field. In Capstone courses, students bring together the knowledge, skills, and interests developed to this point through all aspects of their education, to work on a community project. Students from a variety of majors and backgrounds work as a team, pooling resources, and collaborating with faculty and community leaders to understand and find solutions for issues that are important to them as literate and engaged citizens. Click here to see the wide range of capstones'.

 (Cap)

  • 'SBA 495 is Portland State University’s largest Capstone and engages over 750 students in 35 sections of a business strategy course that partners with an organization in the community to address real world business challenges. In this Capstone students learn to systematically analyze a firm’s internal and external environments and, through engagement with community partners, apply concepts and theories related to the formulation and implementation of business/organization strategies. Students join an interdisciplinary team; pool their knowledge, skills, and interests; use strategy to address a problem or concern of the community partner. Emphasis is on multiple functions and perspectives to understand diverse management and stakeholder interpretations, conceive integrative solutions, and address social and organizational outcomes (Portland State University)'.

(Cap/Inv/PBL)

  • A business simulation game in which teams of 3 each play a real world (and carefully briefed) role that involves them in first developing a ‘pitch’ to a specific type of investor and then ‘fronting’ people from industry. Assessment is based on evaluation from industry, the extent to which what has been learnt is effectively applied to the pitch and a self-evaluation of the effectiveness of the group process against key checkpoints discussed in advance.

(Cap/RPS)

  • Business capstone. Students have to ‘manage’ an international company with constant input of unexpected challenges.

(Cap/Dil)

  • A finance portfolio. Students get a client statement and have to develop and monitor an appropriate share portfolio. The quality of the advice is tested using a ‘real world’ simulation over 5 weeks against what actually happened to the recommended portfolio of shares. The assessment task reflects what they would actually have to do as a stockbroker. As part of the assessment task students have to critically appraise how they developed, monitored and enhanced the portfolio over the 5 weeks and link their strategy and outcomes to all they have learnt.

 (Cap/PBL)

Creative industries, Arts & Design

  • Students are to scan ads using a range of media and contact networks for potentially relevant jobs in their professional area. They are to select one job and outline and justify how they would ‘pitch’ for it. They then have to locate a request for tender and have to write a bid for the tender with a business plan. Assessment includes a focus on the effectiveness of search, the quality and justification of the ‘pitch’ and the relevance of the tender.

 (Inv/Cap/Field)

Education

  • Capstones involving real world projects in particular schools.

 (Cap/Field)

  • Capstone course in a Graduate Certificate in Education (University Teaching) – a negotiated project– the participants choose a ‘hot’ T&L issue and develop it into a conference/journal paper. Staged assessment is used: the first submission is the project proposal. The second is an oral presentation to peers with a collective focus on the challenges, unexpected barriers, how things have had to be changed, how to deal with uncertainty in pursuit of completing the project and suggestions for improvement from the class. An evidence-based self-assessment is carried out using a rubric supplied to the student and then the instructor tests the veracity of the self-assessment.

(Cap/LC/PBL)

  • Capstone in Education: final year students design, run and evaluate the effectiveness of a ‘conference’ in which they bring together all that they have learnt and how they are going to manage the transition into teaching with keynote speakers that include successful early career teachers and other leaders in education.

 (Cap/Co-C/Field)

Engineering

  • A fourth year engineering capstone involves the production of an integrating thesis. Students are given the opportunity to work with a faculty member to define and design an original research project, as well as to conduct and communicate engineering-related research. Every year, nearly 200 students in the Engineering Science program work with over 100 supervisors from 20-25 distinct academic departments, and across theoretical, clinical, design and laboratory settings. This gives the opportunity to assess a number of key attributes in engineering education, such as design, investigation and communication (University of Toronto).

 (Cap/T/V)

  • Waterloo Engineering Ideas clinic - The Engineering Ideas Clinic™ (https://uwaterloo.ca/engineering-ideas-clinic/) at the University of Waterloo supplements a traditional engineering curriculum with open-ended activities designed to spark student self-learning and exploration.
    We focus on design since this represents the pinnacle of engineering practice and integrates a full range of technical and non-technical knowledge, skills and abilities. Examples of Engineering Ideas Clinic Activities:Teamwork Activities include a series of six scaffolded workshops (so far, two are active and four are being designed) provides engineering students with an introduction to team-forming and building, team communication, and conflict management through team-based challenges performed in the context of relevant engineering problems. The last three workshops are intended to provide reinforcement and opportunities for application in the same areas in multidisciplinary settings. Each workshop is approximately two hours and provides an opportunity for both the introduction of theory and practice. Student reaction and learning are assessed via pre- and post-workshop testing and we also intend to measure anticipated improvements in final-year capstone design projects.

 Contacts: Jason Grove (jagrove@uwaterloo.ca) and Sanjeev Bedi (sanjeev.bedi@uwaterloo.ca)

(Cap/PBL)

Health

(Cap)

Hotel management

  • Capstones involving real world projects undertaken in conjunction with a placement. Criteria include the ability to diagnose what lies behind the improvement area chosen and to develop a plan to address it which is demonstrably relevant, feasible and aligned with what has been taught in the course.

 (Cap/Field)

ICT and software engineering

  • Capstones involving real world projects undertaken with a university partner. Criteria for assessment include quality and relevance of what was delivered, relevant application of what has been learnt and partner evaluation on these indicators.

(Cap/Field)

  • Year long capstone – a development reviewed formatively by peers and external entrepreneurs then summatively in a staged way against a rubric discussed and illustrated at the outset of the program.

 (Cap/Inv)

  • Portfolio-based Constructive Alignment: The portfolio-based approach to constructive alignment aims to motivate students to engage in learning by removing marks from coursework assignments, using frequent formative feedback to produce evidence, and performing final summative assessment using criterion referenced assessment. With this approach, educators define unit learning outcomes and assessment criteria to indicate how students can demonstrate they have achieved unit learning outcomes to different grade levels. To help guide students to this understanding, educators create tasks for students to engage with during the teaching period and work with students to help them demonstrate unit learning outcomes through completing these tasks. At the end of the teaching period, the resulting work is compiled into a portfolio for summative assessment, and assessed against the assessment criteria. Data can be collected from the formative feedback process to help educators perform the final summative assessment quickly and accurately. For further details see: http://crpit.com/confpapers/CRPITV136Cain.pdf and See: Cain, Andrew. 2013. “Constructive Alignment for Introductory Programming.” Ph.D. thesis. Swinburne University. Hawthorn, Australia.

 (Cap/Port)

Medicine

  • Capstone: Translational Research (TR) is defined by the National Centre for Advancing Translational Science as ”The process of turning observations in the laboratory, clinic and community into interventions that improve the health of individuals and the public". The Institute of Medical Science (IMS) recently launched a new professional Masters program focused on TR. Central to the program is a Capstone project where students integrate their knowledge to create solutions that address unmet health science needs. The capstone is both a vehicle for problem solving and an opportunity for our students to demonstrate critical skills and competencies that are core-learning outcomes. These skills include networking, collaboration, teamwork, implementation skills, communication, creativity, problem solving and risk management. Unique processes and rubrics are being formulated to capture the exercise of these skills throughout the capstone process. (University of Toronto).

 (Cap/PBL)

Nursing

  • Bachelor of Nursing students are to review all of the clinical reports they have received so far in the course and produce a consolidated self-assessment on key areas of strength and areas for improvement. The areas for enhancement are then prepared for, implemented and tested for effectiveness and further improvement in the final placement.

 (Cap)

Psychology

  • A staged formative and summative assessment process is used in a fourth year class in this program. Each team of four meets with a ‘client’ - a trained psychologist who is role playing - and has to come up with an appropriate counselling response – with a series of dilemmas thrown in by the ‘client’ as they proceed. This is videoed – there is staff, peer and self review of the video. Each student is to identify what everyone said went well, what did not work well and what they would do next time, relating their evaluation to the input of the course. It is this capstone that confirms students are capable of undertaking a foundational counselling session. The room in which the simulation takes place replicates the real life context.

 (Cap/RPS)

Science

  • A capstone subject in science on ‘unravelling complexity’ seeks to illuminate the tacit assumptions underpinning a selected, ‘complex’, tricky issue in science by bringing in keynotes from different disciplines to give their view on them. The assignment requires the students to state their considered position on each with reasons, referring to, drawing upon or critiquing the input from the keynote speakers and the key points made in the course.

 (Cap/Reflect)

Sustainable social, cultural, economic and environmental development

  • Arizona State University course: MAE 446/598 at: http://semte.engineering.asu.edu/docs/solar/syllabi/MAE%20446-598%20Syllabus.doc Energy Systems design
    Capstone Design Course for Energy & Environment Students. The emphasis of the course is on learning and demonstrating the use of the Integrated Product Design (IPD) process. The outcome of the course is for students, through their team projects, to demonstrate their mastery of the ABET criteria for graduating mechanical engineering students.

 (Cap)

Transdisciplinary studies

  • Social sciences/communications capstone involving a multidisciplinary team that has to develop an integrated, relevant action plan to address a real world issue identified by one of the university’s partner NGOs.

 (Cap/PBL)

  • Capstone – student-student collaboration projects in applied statistics across disciplines
    In a capstone course for students in applied statistics, the statistics students collaborate with research students from other disciplines, bringing their quantitative expertise to the projects. The final product is a written report to the collaborator, intended to be of professional quality. Students also work through a sequence of learning activities, all assessed. These activities scaffold the students' skills needed to produce their report. Skills in statistical methodology, computation, and professional report writing are assessed along with the students' understanding of themselves as professionals and their abilities in the non-technical aspects of statistical consultation such as professional and ethical behaviour and written and oral communication, both formal and informal (University of Toronto).

(Cap/Co-C)