Doug,
You should take a look at the volume:
Gardner, J. N., & Van der Veer & Associates (1998). The Senior Year
Experience: Facilitating Integration, Reflection, Closure, and Transition.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
We do have a year long capstone course at R-MWC. It is focused on having
students complete their own research projects. The course does provide the
venue for our outcomes assessment stuff. We handle the advice about
applications for graduate school on an individual basis during advising and
with a group meeting geared toward juniors. Until this year we ignored the
transition to life issues. Those are now handled with a visit from the
director of our Career Development Center to the Senior Seminar. She spends
that visit talking about the services that are available in the center and
how they can benefit the student.
The students think our course is too demanding and that it does not do a
good job of preparing them for real life. Those that go on, think it does a
good job of preparing them for graduate work. We have a campus wide
requirement for a capstone experience. Most departments ask students to
complete some kind of research or performance (theatre, dance, etc.) in that
course. There is widespread faculty discomfort with providing the
"preparation for life" kinds of experiences that many students want in the
departmental capstone. If you can make the capstone academically interesting
you are more likely to get faculty commitment to the course. Then you can
include preparation for the next step and assessment part of that course.
Good luck with your course development.
Dennis
Dennis M. Goff
Dept. of Psychology
Randolph-Macon Woman's College
Lynchburg, VA 24503
-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Peterson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 1999 4:17 PM
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: Senior Capstone Course
I am working with our departmental assessment committee and we have been
discussing a senior capstone course. As of now there are some differing
opinions regarding the content of this course and how many credit hours is
should be worth.
I am hoping that there may be some members out there who have experience
with this type of course.
Our first pass at content was to consider a 1 hour per week course which
covered basic post college preparation activities (applications to grad
school, resume writing, etc.) as well as some assessment issues (e.g., GRE
subject test or similar instrument).
I would be interested in hearing other's opinions regarding what things
should were done in the course, or how it could be handled. If your
institution has a course like this, I would also be interested in knowing is
it targeted at pre-grad school students or all psychology majors? is it
required? What do students/faculty think of it?
Doug
Doug Peterson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of South Dakota
414 E. Clark
Dept. of Psychology
Vermillion, SD 57069
Voice: (605) 677-5295
Fax: (605) 677-6604
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
