Development and Implementation of a Capstone Experience
Hostos Community College, CUNY
Hostos is currently completing its Institutional Assessment Plan which includes the assessment of
general education. Currently, general education assessment is conducted in individual courses. As a
way of identifying how students completing their education have attained those general education
skills, Hostos is proposing to develop capstone experiences.
The creation of capstone experiences would take several forms. First there are several programs
that already have culminating courses. For these courses, capstone assignments would be developed
by the faculty teaching those courses, building on existing assignments. In the second group of
programs, there may be several courses that students take in their final semesters at the college. For
these courses, faculty would again use existing assignments and augment them to become capstone
assignments. Finally, for the Liberal Arts programs, there are no specific culminating courses and
students have a wide range of interests and goals, a capstone course will be developed.
Why Capstone Experiences?
As a high impact practice (HIP), capstone experiences will provide students with a rich culminating
and integrative experience that will synthesize their education at Hostos. Based on information
provided by AAC&U, capstones provide deep learning and students gain general, personal and
practical knowledge. Further, capstone are academically challenging, provide students active and
collaborative learning experiences, and there is also high student-faculty interaction.
In addition, capstone experiences will provide Hostos with a way of assessing the degree to which its
graduates have attained the general education competencies, as well as mastered the program
learning outcomes for their program. Such information will permit each of the programs and the
college to make the necessary and/or appropriate changes to the curriculum to strengthen teaching
and learning.
Finally, the assessment of student learning, including general education is a major initiative in the
college’s Strategic Plan (the assessment of student learning with a focus on general education).
However, because capstones also provide students with experiences that relate to what they will
encounter in a senior college, the capstone experience relates to the graduate and transfer initiatives
within the Strategic Plan, by helping students acclimate to senior college expectations.
Implementation of Capstone Course:
Capstone experiences will be developed by Hostos Community College. There are three (3) types of
experiences: develop a new capstone course (for Liberal Arts); enhance existing courses that
typically taken towards the end of a student’s career; create a capstone assignment in the culminating
course of the program.
As a pilot Hostos would use programs that have a final culminating course. Three programs, Early
Childhood Education (ECE), Criminal Justice, and Dental Hygiene have such courses. ECE has a
fieldwork course, CJ has a culminating course that students take in their final term (prior to
graduation and transfer to John Jay College), and Dental Hygiene has a final clinical course. Initial
concepts are that the capstone assignments would be prompts derived from the college’s general
education rubrics (that were adapted from the AAC&U VALUE rubrics) and which relate to the
general education competencies embedded in the existing course assignments.
The capstone assignments would also embed other HIPs, especially ones that would facilitate the
transfer of these students to four-year colleges (e.g., service learning, undergraduate research, etc.).
Moving forward, Hostos will work with faculty in other programs that do not have a culminating
course, but have courses that are typically taken at the end of students’ careers. The development of
these capstone experiences will be similar to the development described above.
Finally, because there is no single culminating course or courses for students in the Liberal Arts
programs, Hostos will develop a capstone course for these students. Since the Liberal Arts
programs are the largest programs in the college, it is crucial that the courses developed can address
a range of interests and needs. The development of the capstone course, will require several steps in
order to complete: the need to specify the program level outcomes for the Liberal Arts program,
the need develop the curriculum for the course, and then to get the course through the governance
process, as well as getting faculty buy-in and participation.
To create the Liberal Arts capstone course, in Fall 2013, the General Education Committee will be
charged with developing the Liberal Arts Program Outcomes. (As a starting point for their
discussions, they will use the Hostos general education competencies and a list of potential program
outcomes provided as part of Gordon Uno’s presentation at the HIP Institute.) Concurrently, a
faculty committee will be convened and charged with developing the curriculum for the Liberal Arts
capstone course, including ensuring that additional HIPs are included in the experience (see above).
By the end of the Fall 2013 term, both committees will have completed their work. The curriculum
will also include the development of a capstone course template that can be used to develop
additional capstones in the future.
Faculty Involvement:
Because the success of the development and implementation of the capstone experience rests with
the degree to which faculty become involved and enervated by the project. As part of effort to
involve, the faculty, Hostos’ Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) will conduct PDIs on the
development of capstone assignments. The PDI will be open to the faculty, the members of the
two committees working on the Liberal Arts capstone.
Assessment of the Capstone Experience:
The capstone assignments will be assessed for both program level outcomes and the associated
general education outcomes. The program level outcome assessment would be conducted by the
faculty from the program. The general education outcomes assessment would be conducted by a
team created by the General Education Committee. The assessments of both groups will be done
using rubrics.
In addition to the collection of rubric scores, the IR Office will conduct focus groups with students
who have participated in the capstone experience. Students will be asked about their experience, the
benefits of participating in the capstone, and what they would recommend for future activities and
improvements.
The results will be analyzed by the IR Office and reports will be generated that will be shared with
the relevant program faculty, Academic Affairs, and the General Education Committee. Because of
the need to use the information, the IR Office will follow up with program faculty to identify
changes that have been made to the capstone experience (to improve teaching and learning) and the
impact of those changes.
Some Examples of Capstone Experiences in Programs with culminating Courses:
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ECE—identify issues or problems observed in your fieldwork experience…how would you
address the problem? Who would you involve to help to rectify the problem? What
specifically would you recommend be done to correct the problem? What information
sources would you use to justify your recommendations?
Criminal Justice—conduct a substantive literature review and research study that is a policy
paper on a topic relating to CJ, such as juvenile justice, recidivism, equality of the justice
system, sentencing guidelines, community policing, addressing underlying causes of criminal
behavior, capital punishment, etc.
Business Management—create and pitch a business plan for a new business in a specified
area.
Digital Design & Animation—design a pitch for yourself—consider either a website or a
PowerPoint presentation, etc.