Capstone Experience in Career and Technical Education

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Capstone Experience in Career and Technical
Education
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What is a Capstone?

• From George Webster
• 1. A coping stone, a covering course to a wall to
  add a finishing touch.
• 2. The high point crowning achievement.

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What is a Capstone?

• A capstone is a student project.
• The project is usually in their last quarter.
• The project is a gathering of tech non-tech
  skills to express ones completion.
• The project is to be a real authentic challenge
  in ones field of study.
• Represents the final course between school and a
  future career.

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Why Capstone?

• The work place today requires that an individual
  has important non-technical skills. A capstone
  course can provide this.
• Leadership
• Teamwork
• Problem solving
• Decision making
• Communications
• Business

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The World has Changed!

• The world has change with the downsizing and
  stream lining of the manufacture and service
  sector.
• We need to where many hats
• A career tech person has to be a team player and
  a company ambassador to continue to survive.

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Capstone Objectives

• To help prepare students for a successful career
  by providing experiences that enhances their
  labor market advantage.

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Capstone Objective

• To increase students understanding of the big
  picture, including ethical and social issues
  related to the field.

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Capstone Objectives

• To help students understand the relevance of
  theory and research to practice.

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How Effective Are Capstones?

• A survey of Agriculture graduates
• Most beneficial
• Prepared for their first professional job
• Required less on the job training
• Developed
• Problem solving
• Decision making
• Critical thinking
• Human relations skills

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How Effective Are Capstones?

• A survey of Nursing grads
• Opportunity rethink and refocus their career
• Gave a holistic view
• Integrative
• Creative
• Independence
• Self motivating

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How Effective Are Capstones?

• Survey of Integrated Business grads
• Extremely challenged
• They felt unprepared to shift academic courses
  to real world issues.
• Students characteristics and preparatory
  experience helps make capstones effective.

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Using Capstones in Practice

• The capstone components required to provide a
  learning experience are
• Receive
• Relate
• Reflect
• Refine
• Reconstruct

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Receive

• The learner receive an activity
• The activity or experience may be given by a
  facilitator.
• Or the activity may be experienced during the
  capstone course.

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Relate

• Relate learned experience to previously gained
  knowledge.
• Tie the this new learned experience to the
  capstone course philosophy.

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Reflect

• Reflect upon the experience received
• Relating them to each other distinguishing the
  experience you have learned related from capstone
  versus the knowledge you brought.

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Refine

• The refinement process causes further thought on
  the knowledge gained.
• As well as the association of the new knowledge
  with existing knowledge

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Reconstruct

• Learners composite the subject matter content and
  integrate it into their knowledge base.
• They should be able to apply what was learned to
  other situations

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Capstone Framework

• Objectives
• Should be matched with appropriate methods
• Considerations
• Student background
• Instructors teaching style
• Available resources

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Capstone Method

• Successful Capstone experiences depend on methods
  chosen as well as characteristics and preparation
  of students
• Some methods are
• Case Analysis
• Multiple Role Play
• Living Cases
• Storytelling
• Computer Simulations

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Hindering Factors

• Hindering factors for consideration
• Time constraint for student and faculty
• Lack of retention of previous course material
• Lack of computer
• Team
• Writing and Communication skills
• Difficulty with appropriations
• High quality project
• Student self motivation and self directing

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Words of Wisdom

• Capstone will best achieve their goals when the
  issues of student and instructor preparation for
  facilitation, teamwork, self direction, and other
  requirements are addressed throughout the
  curriculum leading up to the culminating
  experience.

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The Crowning Achievement

• Then students will be ready to bring together
  all their fragmented knowledge and skills into a
  coherent whole and to negotiate a successful
  passage from the relative safety of the well
  defined college learning environment to the
  relative ambiguity associated with the world of
  work.