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Capstone projects usually represent the most significant academic endeavor with which students have been involved. Time management tends to be one of the hurdles. On top, University students are prone to procrastinatory behavior. Inexperience and procrastination team up for students failing to meet deadlines. Supervisors strive to help. Yet heavy workloads frequently prevent tutors from continuous involvement. This article looks into the extent to which conversational agents (a.k.a. chatbots) can tackle procrastination in single-student capstone projects. Specifically, chatbot enablers put in play include (1) alerts, (2) advice, (3) automatic rescheduling, (4) motivational messages, and (5) reference to previous capstone projects. Informed by Cognitive Behavioural Theory, these enablers are framed within the three phases involved in self-regulation misalignment: pre-actional, actional, and post-actional. To motivate this research, we first analyzed 77 capstone-project reports. We found that students’ Gantt charts (1) fail to acknowledge review meetings (70%) and milestones (100%) and (2) suffer deviations from the initial planned effort (16.28%). On these grounds, we develop GanttBot, a Telegram chatbot that is configured from the student’s Gantt diagram. GanttBot reminds students about close landmarks, it informs tutors when intervention might be required, and it learns from previous projects about common pitfalls, advising students accordingly. For evaluation purposes, course 17/18 acts as the control group ( N=28 ) while course 18/19 acts as the treatment group ( N=25 students). Using “overdue days” as the proxy for procrastination, results indicate that course 17/18 accounted for an average of 19 days of delay (SD = 5), whereas these days go down to 10 for the intervention group in course 18/19 (SD = 4). GanttBot is available for public usage as a Telegram chatbot.

Nearly all software built today impinges upon end-user privacy and needs to comply with relevant regulations. Therefore, there have been increasing calls for integrating considerations of compliance with privacy regulations throughout the software engineering lifecycle. However, software engineers are typically trained in the technical fields and lack sufficient knowledge and support for sociotechnical considerations of privacy. Privacy ideation cards attempt to address this issue by making privacy compliance understandable and actionable for software developers. However, the application of privacy ideation cards in real-world software projects has not yet been systemically investigated. The effectiveness of ideation cards as a pedagogical tool has not yet been examined either. We address these gaps by studying how teams of undergraduate students applied privacy ideation cards in capstone projects that involved building real-world software for industry sponsors. We found that privacy ideation cards fostered greater consideration and understanding of the extent to which the projects aligned with privacy regulations. We identified three main themes from student discussions of privacy compliance: (i) defining personal data; (ii) assigning responsibility for privacy compliance; and (iii) determining and exercising autonomy. The results suggest that application of the cards for real-world projects requires careful consideration of intersecting factors such as the stage at which the cards are used and the autonomy available to the developers. Pedagogically, ideation cards can facilitate low-level cognitive engagement (especially the cognitive processes of meaning construction and interpretation) for specific components within a project. Higher-level cognitive processes were comparatively rare in ideation sessions. These findings provide important insight to help enhance capstone instruction and to improve privacy ideation cards to increase their impact on the privacy properties of the developed software.

One goal of the education doctorate is to prepare educational leaders who can use research-based evidence to solve complex problems related to education and improve lives. We recently completed a mixed methods study of four EdD programs that showed the kinds of experiences that encourage their graduates to use evidence. This paper uses qualitative data from the study to describe in more detail the strategies these programs used to promote evidence use. These strategies helped students develop skills in finding, assessing, and doing research; applying research; and working with others to use research. They ranged in size from the kinds of in-class activities professors used to help students collectively process what they were learning to the coordinated set of assignments spread across three years to help students turn a work-related issue into a research problem while designing and conducting their capstone doctoral project.

The importance and the challenges of teaching safety are widely recognised amongst educators and industry. There are different approaches to teaching safety, from incorporation of safety into every aspect of a degree programme, to focusing all the safety teaching within stand-alone courses, to an integrated approach which simultaneously combines both approaches to varying extents. Effective safety teaching is also dependent on the experience and knowledge of the teaching staff involved and the locational context of the institution. Here, the novel and comprehensive approaches taken to inherently embed safety teaching within a chemical engineering programme, which is part of the wider Integrated Engineering Programme (IEP) teaching framework at UCL’s Faculty of Engineering Sciences, are examined and its success is measured against student perceptions. Students following the IEP chemical engineering degree programme widely recognise that safety teaching is immediately embedded into the curriculum from the first year and they are given increasing opportunities to apply safety learnings throughout their degree. This leads to a feeling of preparedness for their capstone design projects and future industrial roles, ultimately achieving the aim of developing well-rounded, responsible graduate engineers with a strong safety culture embedded in the way they will approach their future work.

The COVID-19 pandemic hindered the ability to conduct field geology courses in a hands-on and boots-on traditional manner. In response, we designed a multi-part virtual field module that encompasses many of the basic requirements of an advanced field exercise, including designing a mapping strategy, collecting and processing field observations, synthesizing data from field-based and laboratory analyses, and communicating the results to a broad audience. For the mapping exercise, which is set in deformed Proterozoic crystalline basement exposed in the Front Range of Colorado (USA), student groups make daily navigational decisions and choose stations based on topographic maps, Google Earth satellite imagery, and iterative geological reasoning. For each station, students receive outcrop descriptions, measurements, and photographs from which they input field data and create geologic maps using StraboSpot. Building on the mapping exercise, student groups then choose from six supplements, including advanced field structure, microstructure, metamorphic petrology, and several geochronological datasets. Because scientific projects rarely end when the mapping is complete, the students are challenged to see how samples and analytical data may commonly be collected and integrated with field observations to produce a more holistic understanding of the geological history of the field area. While a virtual course cannot replace the actual field experience, modules like the one shared here can successfully address, or even improve on, some of the key learning objectives that are common to field-based capstone experiences, while also fostering a more accessible and inclusive learning environment for all students.

A skilled public health workforce is critical to assure the public's health. Recent scholarship has highlighted the benefits of practice-based fieldwork to train the public health workforce. This scholarship has highlighted these benefits primarily through quantitative evaluation. DePaul University's Master of Public Health (MPH) Program provides practice-based education and training to enable students to develop key competencies in public and community health. A key component of the MPH Program is a 9-month practicum experience. This practicum experience requires students to (1) Complete at least 250 h of fieldwork at a local health organization and (2) write a capstone thesis about their practicum project. In this themed issue, seven MPH Program students provide empirical papers, describing their practicum project and the competencies they gained. These empirical papers build upon existing scholarship on practice-based fieldwork and aim to advance academic and community efforts to assure a skilled public and community health workforce.

The challenge of integrating best practice for teaching and learning is perennial. Within an Australian context, despite increases in student satisfaction over the decades, challenges remain concerning student classroom engagement, peer collaboration and the value and use of technology. Within my own religious and theological university environment, I have sought to address some of these challenges in the development of a Doing Theology Capstone Unit. This paper outlines the key subject information of the unit, followed by five key areas that informed the development. It is argued that by taking seriously the teaching and learning nexus, requires paying attention to these five key areas. The discussion section of this paper, therefore, explores demographics and diversity, active learning, constructive alignment, assessment and technology. These five areas are explored in relation to the developed curriculum for the Doing Theology unit. It is argued that by paying attention to these areas we can enable greater student engagement and peer-to-peer participation.

This case study documents a large, 4-year university magazine’s transition to virtual instruction during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using theoretical frameworks from Kuh’s work on high impact practices (HIPs), this analysis offers empirical evidence that virtual student newsrooms may provide impactful learning experiences during crisis situations. Based on interviews, surveys, and newsroom observation, 23 magazine staff members reported improvements in their professional self-efficacy as they overcame logistics challenges and interpersonal hurdles similar to working media professionals. The case study also identifies strengths and weaknesses of crisis pedagogy. Implications for post-pandemic pedagogy and course planning are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the utility of a small-scale Street Law project as a capstone service-learning course in one Irish university. It begins with a discussion of Street Law as a...

This orientation session was designed to prepare students for their final MBA Capstone project, leverage lessons learned from graduates, transfer prior learning about teams and project management, and launch consulting projects with actual clients. Companies have used orientation sessions to onboard new employees for many years to improve productivity and innovation. Comparatively, the use of student orientation sessions is an understudied area. Our exploratory survey of 68 Capstone students on the completion of their course indicates that they benefit from this session, and subsequently have demonstrated marked improvement in teamwork and client deliverables according to their professors. This article addresses the elements of the orientation session that can be replicated and implemented by other professors teaching similar courses. We recommend that future research continue to examine this pedagogy.

Study fits JEBS category “innovative instructional classroom projects/best practices” by exploring questions in the literature about perceptions of Realism in strategy simulation.First, student sur...

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.

The capstone course serves to integrate accumulated knowledge with a culminating experience or project and is a common component in undergraduate and graduate programs. The research on capstones courses shows that many capstone experiences or projects involve students working with outside clients, such as local businesses and organizations, to solve problems or develop new projects or campaigns. Such capstone experiences or projects seek to offer students real-world, career-building experience, while the clients seek to benefit from the learned academic knowledge of the students. Where the literature is scarce on client-based capstone projects is when the client is the student’s employer or career-related organization. A graduate program in administration at a public Midwestern university in the USA offers a different approach to the student–client model by requiring a degree-culminating capstone project that challenges adult students to apply their learned knowledge to solve administrative problems not for an outside client but at their place of employment or career-related organization. The researchers surveyed 66 alumni and interviewed 6 on how the capstone project had benefited their work-related learning and its impact on their employer or career-related organization. Students perceived an improvement in their ability to define and analyze administrative problems in their workplace, while the employers or organizations which implemented the project recommendations experienced positive organizational change. This case study contributes to the literature on capstone courses by examining the relevance of a work- or career-related capstone project to students and their workplace.

Evaluating learning outcomes depends upon objective and actionable measures of what students know – that is, what can they do with what they have learned. In the context of a developmental biology course, a capstone of many molecular biology degree programs, I asked students to predict the behaviors of temporal and spatial signaling gradients. Their responses led me to consider an alternative to conventional assessments, namely a process in which students are asked to build and apply plausible explanatory mechanistic models (“PEMMs”). A salient point is not whether students' models are correct, but whether they “work” in a manner consistent with underlying scientific principles. Analyzing such models can reveal the extent to which students recognize and accurately apply relevant ideas. An emphasis on model building, analysis and revision, an authentic scientific practice, can be expected to have transformative effects on course and curricular design as well as on student engagement and learning outcomes.

Information and resources for faculty who are interested in developing an undergraduate laboratory course on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

This project will collate and summarize research directed at implementing capstone courses

Engineering designers are encouraged to consider relevant contextual factors throughout their design processes. However, specific practices for incorporating context into design processes are lacking in the existing literature, and curricula related to the use of context during design processes is limited. As a preliminary step toward characterizing novice engineering designers' use of contextual factors, we qualitatively coded 10 mechanical engineering capstone design reports for contextual factors; half of the projects had domestic sponsors with varying themes, and the other half of the projects had international sponsors with a global health theme. Our findings showed that teams considered technological and institutional factors most frequently; other factors were considered less frequently. Global health themed design teams considered more contextual factors than non-global health themed teams. There was considerable variability among the contextual factors considered, as well as the stages during which they were considered. These outcomes have the potential to inform the development of pedagogical tools to support the acquisition of skills related to formally addressing context during engineering design processes.

The transformation of new paradigms for online learning delivery has evolved rapidly over the past few years. For postgraduate programmes, the thesis module is regularly the capstone and significant in terms of academic credits. In reality, this module can be just an ‘add on’ set of resources with no dedicated online learning space. Industry students undertaking postgraduate programmes online traditionally feel overwhelmed while embarking on a thesis. Notably, too, they face the challenge of not being on campus and having the same learning opportunities as their on-campus counterparts. This paper highlights the importance of supporting and assisting online industry learners in participating fully with their thesis. The authors identify the challenges that face these learners at postgraduate level, recognising that a new way to help and prepare them to carry out and write a good thesis is essential. By focusing on a dedicated online module for ‘all things thesis’, the paper presents the positive experiences learners can have when participating in this module. The findings emphasise the need for educational providers to offer as part of their programmes a high-quality thesis module designed to support the postgraduate online industry learner.

Curriculum-embedded undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have the unique advantage that all students enrolled in a course engage in authentic scientific research. While CUREs guided by faculty research interests are common, this article describes CUREs embedded in the senior chemistry curriculum that were driven entirely by students’ research interests. Activities are described in detail that brought student-driven CUREs (SD-CUREs) from their inception of defining research questions to the fruition of presenting results at multiple venues to diverse audiences, over the course of the academic year. These activities included building students’ proficiency in analytical instrumentation, enhancing their library research and technical writing skills, and providing support as students developed research questions and laboratory protocols starting from the primary literature. Students gained experience in grant writing by submitting proposals to the “Capstone Projects Grant” funded by The Evergreen State College Foundation. Support provided by the science staff, the librarian/writing instructor, as well as financial support from the college were instrumental in the success of the SD-CUREs. While there were some inherent challenges, SD-CUREs resulted in the evolution of a research community of engaged student leaders who demonstrated ownership of their research projects and were supportive and conducive to the success of all students. A survey of students indicated very positive impressions of the CUREs. Assessment tools used for the SD-CUREs, success of students beyond the CUREs, and the impact of COVID-19 on the CUREs are discussed in the article.

Reflective practice is becoming a more necessary skill across all disciplines and industry sectors. This study describes the reflective processes capstone engineering students engaged with as part ...

Aims Nursing students in Taiwan often study in interdisciplinary teams that must create healthcare products. Creativity is imperative for the students' success, but studies have not explored the relational precursors to team creativity in nursing education. Therefore, the relationship was examined between task interdependence, interaction behaviours (constructive controversy, helping behaviours and spontaneous communication) and creativity for nursing students on interdisciplinary teams in Taiwan to investigate whether high task interdependence moderates the correlations between interaction behaviours and creativity. Design Descriptive, cross-sectional, quantitative study. Methods Participants were nursing students (N = 99) attending interdisciplinary capstone courses in 2- or 4-year nursing programmes at a university for science and technology in Taiwan. Self-report questionnaires were used to collect the students' demographics and perceptions of their teams' task interdependence, interaction behaviours and creativity between January 2018 and January 2019. Pearson's correlation coefficient revealed variable associations. SPSS PROCESS macro displayed moderating effects. Results Task interdependence had significant positive correlations with all three interaction behaviours and team creativity. Each interaction behaviour also had significant positive correlations with team creativity. High task interdependence negatively moderated the relationships between team creativity and (a) constructive controversy, and (b) spontaneous communication, but not (c) helping behaviours. Conclusion The empirically validated moderation model and study results suggest that nursing educators can foster creativity in their students by encouraging task interdependence and helping behaviours, and teaching students to build constructive controversy and spontaneous communication into their collaborative plans. Impact In Taiwan, nursing students must demonstrate creativity in interdisciplinary capstone courses. Their ability to do so requires them to cooperate with students in other disciplines who have unique skills or knowledge. This study provides insights into the relational factors that may improve creativity for nursing students on interdisciplinary teams.

Design is a fundamental component in various engineering curricula. Programs across the nation teach this component via design projects in different courses, culminating in a capstone design course in the final year. While these projects may achieve the goal of teaching the use of mathematics and sciences to meet design objectives and constraints, they are limited in terms of the team size, scope of the project, and diversity of team members.

Background: Capstone courses are well documented in pharmacy programmes, but vary in content, methods, and assessment. Aim: To describe the development and implementation of a capstone course for pharmacy students. Description: Components of the capstone course included clinical reviews, pre-tests, calculations, cases, and formative and summative objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs). Formative OSCEs were a unique aspect of this capstone course, and were used to help students identify clinical strengths and recognise areas of weakness prior to advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPE). Evaluation: A total of 72 students completed the capstone course in spring 2018. Student survey data indicated that the format of the course was conducive to learning, particularly the use of formative OSCEs. Conclusion: A capstone course was successfully designed and implemented that assessed a variety of pharmacy knowledge and skills prior to APPE. Student feedback and performance in the course provided insight that led to revisions in the pre-APPE curriculum.

This paper compares case studies and simulations, two popular experiential learning techniques used in capstone strategy courses, to provide insights into how each may contribute to the development...

During the summer of 2020, many geology field camps were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the karst geomorphology field course I was scheduled to co-teach through Western Kentucky University. When the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT), in collaboration with the International Association for Geoscience Diversity (IAGD), began the project of supporting working groups to create online field experience teaching materials, this presented an opportunity. This paper describes the development of two activities derived from that field camp curriculum that are now freely available as peer-reviewed exemplary teaching activities on the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) Online Field Experiences repository under “Karst hydrogeology: a virtual field introduction using © Google Earth and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)” and “Karst hydrogeology: a virtual field experience using © Google Earth, GIS, and TAK [Topographic Analysis Kit].” Each product includes a student handout, an instructor workflow reference, a grading rubric, and NAGT-established learning objectives. The introductory activity is the more basic of the two, is expected to take about an 8 h workday to teach, and walks students through all the steps, as well as providing global examples of karst landscapes that can be virtually explored. The other activity, “Karst hydrogeology and geomorphology”, assumes student familiarity with © Google Earth, GIS, and karst drainage systems and is expected to take about twice as long as the introductory activity to teach. To make these learning opportunities financially accessible, all software required for the activities is open source, and alternative workflows for the introductory module are provided so that the entire exercise can be completed using a mobile device. Addressing this need for virtual capstone options during the pandemic, and providing a virtual alternative for years to come, these karst activities, along with a subset of other SERC activities, were assembled into three learning tracks, each one providing learning hours equivalent to a traditional field camp, that have been added to the course offerings at the University of Cincinnati Department of Geology. In addition to providing online capstone activities in the time of a pandemic, these learning materials provide alternative experiences to traditional field camps that are inclusive for all geoscience students.

Background: Communication is critical to engineering work, and despite its emphasis within engineering education, it is still noted as a gap in new engineers’ preparedness for work. Literature review: Prior research points to communication gaps among new engineers. Few studies have extensively examined transitions between academic and professional engineering contexts. Work remains for understanding how new engineers transfer communication skills. Research questions: 1. In what ways do new engineers transfer communication practices from school to work? 2. What challenges do new engineers experience in moving from communication as practiced at school to communication as practiced at work? Research methodology: This study presents a thematic analysis of data from weekly reflections and regular semistructured interviews conducted during new engineers’ first year of work. Results and conclusions: Despite relying heavily on academic experiences involving both documenting and presenting technical work, new engineers report experiencing communication-related challenges. While further attention to communication activities can be given within engineering curricula, the complexity and situated nature of communication in the workplace cannot be fully replicated in the classroom. As new engineers move between school and work, they experience challenges adapting to a new environment including communication activities embedded within unique sociocultural contexts. While the classroom cannot fully replicate these professional settings and all of their nuances, students can be made more fully aware of the embedded nature of communication activities. Moreover, engineering educators can simulate aspects of the workplace in capstone courses, and companies can provide guidance to help mentor new engineers through the inevitable context gaps.

Engineering design decisions have non-trivial implications, and empathic approaches are one way that engineers can understand and translate the perspectives of diverse stakeholders. Prior literatur...

PurposeAn academic–practitioner divide exists suggesting the need for business education curriculum to more appropriately suit private-sector demands. This calls for pedagogical approaches that offer experiences and build skill sets to better prepare graduates for the workforce. The authors propose a framework, collaborative engagement experience-based learning (CEEBL), as a new pedagogical method for teaching and learning in business education. This research provides a viable solution to bridge the gap between academia and industry. The authors suggest CEEBL also offers business students new methods of engagement in the world of work.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory study investigates the CEEBL framework applied to a business education course in competitive intelligence (CI) and a crisis simulation exercise that offer “real world” experiences to students. Data were collected in two semesters and included feedback from over 70 undergraduate students.FindingsResults suggest that the CEEBL framework provides students with the learning experiences to build much-needed skill sets. Additionally, Hallinger and Lu's (2011) assessment of overall instructional effectiveness showed positive statistical results for its dimensions.Originality/valueThe CEEBL framework is coined from two existing pedagogical underpinnings; collaborative engagement (CE) and experience-based Learning (EBL). These concepts offer insights into the ways in which CE promotes a rich learning experience. The new framework takes into consideration the relationship(s) among the dimensions of CE and EBL and how they intertwine with each other to create a pedagogical method that can better prepare students for a dynamic workplace. CEEBL can be easily adapted for online, hybrid or in-session teaching environments. Additionally, the framework offers flexibility in application to other disciplines while addressing current topics and issues through the capstone exercise.