Enrich your students and the institution with a high-impact practice Designing and Teaching Undergraduate Capstone Courses is a practical, research-backed guide to creating a course that is valuable for both the student and the school. The book covers the design, administration, and teaching of capstone courses throughout the undergraduate curriculum, guiding departments seeking to add a capstone course, and allowing those who have one to compare it to others in the discipline. The ideas presented in the book are supported by regional and national surveys that help the reader understand what's common, what's exceptional, what works, and what doesn't within capstone courses. The authors also provide additional information specific to different departments across the curriculum, including STEM, social sciences, humanities, fine arts, education, and professional programs. Identified as a high-impact practice by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities' LEAP initiative, capstone courses culminate a student's final college years in a project that integrates and applies what they've learned. The project takes the form of a research paper, a performance, a portfolio, or an exhibit, and is intended to showcase the student's very best work as a graduating senior. This book is a guide to creating for your school or department a capstone course that ties together undergraduate learning in a way that enriches the student and adds value to the college experience. Understand what makes capstone courses valuable for graduating students Discover the factors that make a capstone course effective, and compare existing programs, both within academic disciplines and across institutions Learn administrative and pedagogical techniques that increase the course's success Examine discipline-specific considerations for design, administration, and instruction Capstones are generally offered in departmental programs, but are becoming increasingly common in general education as well. Faculty and administrators looking to add a capstone course or revive an existing one need to understand what constitutes an effective program. Designing and Teaching Undergraduate Capstone Courses provides an easily digested summary of existing research, and offers expert guidance on making your capstone course successful.

"Enrich your students and the institution with a high-impact practiceDesigning and Teaching Undergraduate Capstone Courses is a practical, research-backed guide to creating a course that is valuable for both the student and the school. The book covers the design, administration, and teaching of capstone courses throughout the undergraduate curriculum, guiding departments seeking to add a capstone course, and allowing those who have one to compare it to others in the discipline. The ideas presented in the book are supported by regional and national surveys that help the reader understand what's common, what's exceptional, what works, and what doesn't within capstone courses. The authors also provide additional information specific to different departments across the curriculum, including STEM, social sciences, humanities, fine arts, education, and professional programs. Identified as a high-impact practice by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities' LEAP initiative, capstone courses culminate a student's final college years in a project that integrates and applies what they've learned. The project takes the form of a research paper, a performance, a portfolio, or an exhibit, and is intended to showcase the student's very best work as a graduating senior. This book is a guide to creating for your school or department a capstone course that ties together undergraduate learning in a way that enriches the student and adds value to the college experience. Understand what makes capstone courses valuable for graduating students Discover the factors that make a capstone course effective, and compare existing programs, both within academic disciplines and across institutions Learn administrative and pedagogical techniques that increase the course's success Examine discipline-specific considerations for design, administration, and instruction Capstones are generally offered in departmental programs, but are becoming increasingly common in general education as well. Faculty and administrators looking to add a capstone course or revive an existing one need to understand what constitutes an effective program. Designing and Teaching Undergraduate Capstone Courses provides an easily digested summary of existing research, and offers expert guidance on making your capstone course successful"--

Undertaking Capstone Projects in Education provides students with all of the information required to successfully design and complete a capstone project. Guiding the reader in a step-by-step process, this book covers how to create a question, select a topic of interest, and apply the best possible design solutions. Structured in a way that will help readers build their skills, chapters explore all aspects of the capstone project from the inception of the idea, to laying the foundations, designing the project, analysing the data, and presenting the findings. Filled with examples and written in a friendly and collaborative style, this key guide uses simple language and easy-to-understand examples to unpack complex research issues. This book is essential reading for students and anyone interested in undertaking a capstone project in the field of education.

"Threshold Concepts in Practice brings together fifty researchers from sixteen countries and a wide variety of disciplines to analyse their teaching practice, and the learning experiences of their students, through the lens of the Threshold Concepts Framework. In any discipline, there are certain concepts – the ‘jewels in the curriculum’ – whose acquisition is akin to passing through a portal. Learners enter new conceptual (and often affective) territory. Previously inaccessible ways of thinking or practising come into view, without which they cannot progress, and which offer a transformed internal view of subject landscape, or even world view. These conceptual gateways are integrative, exposing the previously hidden interrelatedness of ideas, and are irreversible. However they frequently present troublesome knowledge and are often points at which students become stuck. Difficulty in understanding may leave the learner in a ‘liminal’ state of transition, a ‘betwixt and between’ space of knowing and not knowing, where understanding can approximate to a form of mimicry. Learners navigating such spaces report a sense of uncertainty, ambiguity, paradox, anxiety, even chaos. The liminal space may equally be one of awe and wonderment. Thresholds research identifies these spaces as key transformational points, crucial to the learner’s development but where they can oscillate and remain for considerable periods. These spaces require not only conceptual but ontological and discursive shifts. This volume, the fourth in a tetralogy on Threshold Concepts, discusses student experiences, and the curriculum interventions of their teachers, in a range of disciplines and professional practices including medicine, law, engineering, architecture and military education. Cover image: Detail from ‘Eve offering the apple to Adam in the Garden of Eden and the serpent’ c.1520–25. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). Bridgeman Images. All rights reserved.

Practical Concepts for Capstone Design Engineering is the first and only comprehensive senior-level college textbook that provides the essential information needed to complete a successful capstone project in civil or construction engineering. Students will gain valuable insight and preparation for civil and construction engineering professional practice, and will learn how to smoothly transition from strictly academic work to solving real-world problems in the context of their capstone projects. The authors provide professional quality work examples, case studies, helpful hints, and assignments at the end of each chapter that further enhance comprehension. In addition to providing students with the key skills necessary to successfully enter the profession, they will also be well prepared for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam upon graduation. Key Features: Replicates the steps used by practicing engineers to complete design projects from site selection, investigation, and site planning, through the preliminary design calculations and drawing preparation. Offers an approach for integrating students, faculty, design professionals, clients, consultants and regulators bridging the gap between the classroom and the profession with astounding results Provides faculty with a framework for developing an effective capstone course, including examples of grading and rubric sheets for student presentations Appropriate for adoption as primary or supplemental reading in other engineering and construction courses as well

One of the great challenges in higher education is to help students integrate their learning. The capacity to make connections is essential to the conduct of personal, professional, and civic life, and is at the very heart of liberal education. It is also, arguably, more important than ever, and more difficult to achieve, as students transfer among multiple institutions and struggle to balance work and study. Indeed, many of the basic structures of academic life encourage them to see their courses as isolated requirements to complete. This paper explores the challenges to integrative learning today as well as its longer tradition and rationale within a vision of liberal education. In outlining promising directions for campus work, the authors draw on AAC&U's landmark report "Greater Expectations" as well as the Carnegie Foundation's long-standing initiative on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Readers will find a map of the terrain of interactive learning on which promising new development in undergraduate education can be cultivated, learned from, and built upon.

Powerful Teacher Education describes the strategies, goals, content, and processes of seven highly successful and long-standing teacher education programs - Alverno College, Bank Street College, Trinity University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Southern Maine, University of Virginia, and Wheelock College. All these colleges and universities have succeeded in preparing teachers to teach diverse learners to achieve high levels of performance and understanding. In discussing the common features of these programs, Linda Darling-Hammond shows what outstanding teacher education models do and how they do it, and what their graduates accomplish as a result. Powerful Teacher Education also examines the policies, organizational features, resources, and relationships that have enabled these programs to succeed.