Academic literature on the topic 'Honors capstone'

University Honors programming in the United States is interdisciplinary and collaborative; from First Year Honors Seminars to capstone research projects for upperclassmen, Honors students embrace multidisciplinary learning and research. This approach, however, does not always translate into the Honors classroom in regards to an incorporation of diverse perspectives of multiple faculty members in a given course. This article utilizes a mixed-methods approach to explore the impact and results of a collaboratively taught Honors Seminar. “Exploring Faculty and Student Reflections on Collaborative Teaching in the Honors Seminar Classroom” departs from the authors’ model of a co-taught Honors Seminar and then moves to an exploration of the student responses, comparing both a pre- and post-course survey, that considers student perceptions of multi-instructor formats. The essay ends with a brief conclusion that addresses some possible challenges to team-taught courses, from scheduling to institutional issues, in the context of Honors programming in an effort to encourage continued discussion about collaborative teaching of Honors Seminars.

All of us who love what we do as teachers; who love our disciplines, scholarship, and students; who thrive on the challenges and rewards of honors education—we all have faced many new obstacles and disappointments caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Having resources to help us deal with the shifts is key to moving forward. While many concerns have surfaced in our profession, this essay’s collection of international resources focuses on four topics that affect honors in immediate ways: retooling faculty approaches to teaching; addressing student access and success; adapting capstone projects and presentations to online delivery and assessment; and adjusting grades (always a big factor in honors recruitment, retention, scholarships, alumni pathways, and more). To make the collection more useful, the list of resources includes some brief annotations to help organize and preview the items.

Honors College students at Purdue University are required to complete a capstone project as part of the curriculum. Many students experienced a disruption to their research plans in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, faculty launched a place-based research initiative to recruit students to be onsite researchers from wherever they were. A Foldit research group was created for students from biology-related majors.

This article discusses how assessment tools can be used to improve student learning in undergraduate bachelors (BA/BS) in psychology programs. The article first reviews particular advantages associated with using curricular and cocurricular maps for performing systematic program assessment. After identifying various assessment tools created by the American Psychological Association, we discuss some essential arenas for program assessment in psychology, including curricular structure and related issues, introductory psychology, capstone courses, internships, research experiences and honors projects, graduate placement data, and routine academic program reviews. We close the article by offering assessment tips for program administrators.

This article explores experiential learning in archives and special collections as an emerging area of digital humanities pedagogy within which librarians can take a central role. The case studies presented cover a range of undergraduate research projects that incorporated active and inquiry-based learning exercises with digital archives as a pedagogical approach to digital humanities instruction. The research projects include an honors project to create an online exhibit of medieval manuscript leaves, a capstone experience in the library to explore the relationship between archives and social justice, and a course project that used the University Archives to research the University of Scranton’s Black history.

Various personal dimensions of students—particularly motivation, self-efficacy beliefs, and epistemic beliefs—can change in response to teaching, affect student learning, and be conceptualized as learning dispositions. We propose that these learning dispositions serve as learning outcomes in their own right; that patterns of interrelationships among these specific learning dispositions are likely; and that differing constellations (or learning disposition profiles) may have meaningful implications for instructional practices. In this observational study, we examine changes in these learning dispositions in the context of six courses at four institutions designed to scaffold undergraduate thesis writing and promote students’ scientific reasoning in writing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We explore the utility of cluster analysis for generating meaningful learning disposition profiles and building a more sophisticated understanding of students as complex, multidimensional learners. For example, while students’ self-efficacy beliefs about writing and science increased across capstone writing courses on average, there was considerable variability at the level of individual students. When responses on all of the personal dimensions were analyzed jointly using cluster analysis, several distinct and meaningful learning disposition profiles emerged. We explore these profiles in this work and discuss the implications of this framework for describing developmental trajectories of students’ scientific identities.

Abstract At a liberal arts college, immunology is not restricted to a specialized biology course. Its relevance to global public health attracts biology majors and non-majors. Its inherent evolutionary scaffolding and broad focus on cellular/molecular physiology makes it suitable for all levels of the majors’ curriculum. With sophisticated technology and model systems, and translational significance, it appeals to senior biology majors undertaking collaborative research with faculty, participating in journal club-style seminar courses and writing independent capstone papers. At Macalester College, we offer a multi-level immunology curriculum ranging from non-majors global and community health seminars on pandemics and vaccine development, an introductory immunology course, with laboratory and civic engagement components, for juniors, and senior-level seminar and research courses and honors research projects. Our flow cytometry core supports labs across the biology curriculum. With its inherent focus on integrative thinking and application of concepts to solving problems, relevance to global health and lastly, but importantly, room for concepts of identity, organization and collective action, immunology is a perfect liberal art. We present examples of course and laboratory innovations, strategies for funding a research laboratory at a liberal arts college, and ways of getting students across campus engaged in studying the immune system.

Purpose The research project assessed information literacy skill changes in college students at two points in time, as entering first-year students in 2012 and as seniors in their senior seminar capstone courses in the 2015–2016 academic year. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach The Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS) individual test was the selected instrument. Version 1 of the test was used for first-year students and Version 2 was used for seniors. All testing was done in person in computer labs with a librarian or library staff member present to proctor the test. This resulted in obtaining 330 student results as first years and 307 as seniors, with 161 exact matches for both administrations of the test. Exact matching of student scores to demographic details pulled from the college’s student information systems were used in the analysis. Findings The analysis shows that overall first-year students tested below the 70 percent proficiency benchmark in all eight skill sets, but by the time they were seniors they scored above 70 percent in three skill sets. Male students and students of color performed lower than their counterparts, but these groups did demonstrate significant improvement in four skill sets by the time they were seniors. Students in the Honors program, those who took longer to complete the test as seniors, those with higher GPAs, those in Humanities majors, and those who had upper level course exposures to librarian information literacy instruction had higher performance on the test. There were no statistically significant results for students who were first generation, Pell Grant eligible, or were in-state or out-of-state residents. Originality/value There are few published studies that utilized the SAILS test for longitudinal institution-wide assessment. The majority of institutions that utilized the individual version of SAILS did so to determine change within a selected course, or set of courses, in the same semester and very few are published.

FOREWORD This special issue of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Review highlights top papers from the 2020 annual General Donald R. Keith memorial capstone conference held at the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY. The conference was certainly a first of its kind virtual conference including asynchronous delivery of paper presentations followed by synchronous question and answer sessions with evaluation panels. Following a careful review of 63 total submissions, eleven were selected for publication in this journal. Unique to this year’s special edition is the mixed selection of seven project team capstone papers, and four honors research papers. Each paper incorporated features of systems or industrial engineering and presented detailed and reflective analysis on the topic. Although there are many elements which cut across the works, three general bodies of knowledge emerged in the papers including: systems engineering and decision analysis, systems design, modeling and simulation, and system dynamics. Systems Engineering and Decision Analysis topics included three unique contributions. Recognized as ‘best paper’ at the 2020 virtual conference, the work of Robinson et al. designed a multi-year predictive cost engineering model enabled through an MS O365 Power BI decision support interface to support U.S. Army Corps of Engineer (USACE) inland waterway national investment strategies. Schloo and Mittal’s work presents research in testing and evaluation of the Engagement Skills Trainer (EST) 2000 towards improving real-world soldier performance. Gerlica et al. employs a robust and scalable K-means clustering methodology to improve decision making in defensive shift schemes for Air Force Baseball outfield personnel. Systems Design works included three unique contributions. Binney et al. worked to design evaluation criteria for military occupational specialties associated with open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts for the Army’s OSINT Office. Hales et al. interdisciplinary work aided in the design of search and identification systems to be incorporated on autonomous robotics to enable survivability improvements for the Army’s chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives (CBRNE) units. Burke and Connell evaluated and designed a performance measurement-based assessment methodology for U.S. Pacific Command’s Key Leader Engagement process. System modeling and simulation included three unique contributions: Arderi et al. simulated and assessed how the Hyper-Enabled Operator (HEO) project improves situational awareness for U.S. Special Forces using the Infantry Warrior Simulation (IWARS). Blanks et al. employed a VBA module and Xpress software for a scheduling optimization model for enhancement of final exam scheduling at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Kelley and Mittal utilized a Batch Run Analysis and Simulation Studio (BRASS) program to batch multiple iterations of IWARS scenarios to study the integration of autonomous systems alongside military units. Finally, two unique contributions utilizing system dynamics (SD) modeling is presented: Dixon and Krueger developed a Vensim SD model to examine how policy recommendations across Central America could restrict gang activities while positively promoting women’s involvement in society. Cromer et al. utilized systems design approaches and a K-means clustering machine learning techniques to develop SD models in support of the U.S. Africa Command and Defense Threat Reduction Agency to examine the interdependence of threats across the Horn of Africa. Thank you and congratulations to the 2020 undergraduate scholars and all authors who provided meaningful contributions through steadfast intellectual efforts in their fields of study! Well done! LTC James H. Schreiner, PhD, PMP, CPEM Program Director, Systems and Decision Sciences (SDS) Department of Systems Engineering United States Military Academy Mahan Hall, Bldg 752, Room 423 West Point, NY 10996, USA james.schreiner@westpoint.edu

For the past three years, I have experimented with courses for senior undergraduate and first year graduate students that incorporate features of directed reading projects, making use of a Managed Learning System (MLS) site as a “virtual research centre” for collaborative investigation of critical issues in the reading of Elizabethan texts. An honours seminar on “Sex and Politics in Elizabethan England” provided a “capstone” experience for fifteen students conducting independent research projects on a group of core texts. Research logs were posted on “Themes and Issues” pages, and essays were published in a journal on the MLS site. In master’s-level classes on “The Life-Cycle of Some Renaissance Texts,” a similar system provided a “cornerstone” for graduate studies. Each student adopted a text that presented issues related to publication, authorship, circulation, or historical “afterlife.” Work-in-progress was shared in class and on the MLS site, and the group acted as the editorial committee for an online journal. Durant ces trois dernières années, nous avons exploré des voies pédagogiques sur des cours de troisième et quatrième année, ainsi que des cours de première année du cycle supérieur, qui comportaient des recherches dirigées. Ces tâches de recherche guidée étaient effectuées à l’aide d’une plateforme d’apprentissage informatique (Managed Learning System), fonctionnant comme un centre de recherche virtuel conçu en vue d’une recherche collaborative sur des questions d’interprétation et de critique de textes élisabéthains. Un séminaire de quatrième année (Honours) intitulé « Sex and Politics in Elizabethan England » a donné l’occasion à 15 étudiants/es d’acquérir une expérience de recherche indépendante portant sur un ensemble de textes, propre à conclure un diplôme de premier cycle. Les journaux de bord étaient téléversés dans une page dédiée aux « Thèmes et problèmes », tandis que les essais étaient publiés dans une revue hébergée sur la plateforme informatique (MLS). Dans le cours de première année du second cycle intitulé « The Life Cycle of Some Renaissance Texts », une plateforme du même type servait de point de ralliement. Chaque étudiant/e a travaillé sur un texte particulier soulevant des questions relatives à la publication, à la paternité auctoriale, à la circulation, et à sa postérité. Le déroulement de leur travail de recherche était partagé en classe et sur la plateforme informatique, tandis que le même groupe, engagé dans la réalisation d’une revue en ligne, effectuait également les tâches d’un comité éditorial.

This chapter explores the honors thesis as a capstone option whereby students develop a research idea, conduct a literature review, collect and analyze data, summarize and interpret results, and present the findings in a presentation and written thesis. This process builds upon key curricular components in that it necessarily involves knowledge of research methods and data analysis techniques, theories and findings in relevant substantive content areas, and ethical considerations. Using a case example, the chapter argues that an honors thesis is a reasonable option for meeting capstone goals.

The mission of the United States Military Academy (USMA) is “To educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country; professional growth throughout a career as an officer in the United States Army; and a lifetime of selfless service to the nation.” [1] In order to accomplish this mission, USMA puts their cadets through a 47-month program that includes a variety of military training, and college courses totaling about 150 credit-hours. Upon completion of the program, cadets receive a Bachelor of Science degree and become Second Lieutenants in the United States Army. A very unique aspect of the academic program at USMA is that each cadet is required to take a minimum of five engineering classes regardless of their major or field of study. This means that about 500 cadets will have taken the one-semester course in thermodynamics. The thermodynamics course taught at USMA is different from others throughout the country because within every class there is a mixture of cadets majoring in engineering and those that are in other majors, i.e. languages, history [2]. Topics on gas turbine machinery have been integrated into this unique thermodynamics course. Because the cadets will encounter gas turbines throughout their service in the Army, we feel that it is important for all of the students, not just engineering majors, to learn about gas turbines, their operation, and their applications. This is accomplished by four methods. The first is in a classroom environment. Cadets learn how actual gas turbines work, how to model them, and learn how to solve problems. Thermodynamics instructors have access to several actual gas turbines used in military applications to aid in cadet learning. The second method occurs in the laboratory where cadets take measurements and analyze an operational auxiliary power unit (APU) from an Army helicopter. The third method occurs in the form of a design project. The engineering majors redesign the cogeneration plant that exists here at West Point. Many of them use a topping cycle in this design. The final method is a capstone design project. During the 2001–02 academic year, three cadets are improving the thermodynamic laboratories. Among their tasks are designing a new test stand for the APU, increasing the benefit of the gas turbine laboratory through more student interaction, and designing a web-based gas turbine pre-laboratory instruction to compliment the actual laboratory exercise.