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Australian academics and students are discovering the value of final-year capstone units. Often designed as inquiry-based projects, capstones can engage students in authentic work that interests them personally, while building on their disciplinary knowledge and graduate capabilities. However, for some academics dealing with less academically accomplished students, the focus on student-directed activity that is inherent in inquiry-based learning can be a cause of concern. The cross-disciplinary inquiry-based capstone in Arts at an Australian university discussed in this chapter should allay some of those concerns. The cohort at this university includes a high proportion of non-traditional and first in the family students, many from non-English speaking backgrounds. The success of this capstone stems from student teams selecting and designing their own projects, often drawing on knowledge(s) and concerns relevant to their own diverse communities. The flexible framework and guided inquiry approach sees tutors step back – becoming facilitators rather than experts – and this in turn builds students’ confidence in their capacity to plan and execute their projects. The range and quality of student projects carried out in this capstone (many of which involve close links with local communities and advocacy organisations) attest to the value of cross-disciplinary, inquiry-based and student-managed capstone units.

This chapter examines the design and impact on student learning in two STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) capstone undergraduate research courses at Saint Augustine’s University. It discusses how these courses help student metacognitive capabilities as they synthesize their learning across the program, demonstrate holistic development, and successfully negotiate the transition to their next academic and career pathway. It couples data from these capstone research courses with a review of the literature to elucidate the conditions and impact that undergraduate research STEM capstone courses have benefited students, faculty and the University. These best practices for the capstone courses may be used as a model for other HBCUs capstone courses or undergraduate research experiences. Throughout this chapter, the following questions are addressed: How do the capstone courses prepare students for graduate school and/or the STEM workforce? How are the capstone courses enhancing student undergraduate experiences? How do the capstone courses offer authentic research experiences for each student in spite of limited resources and faculty? How do students and faculty feel they have benefited from the capstone course experience? How have students overall learning been enhanced because of the capstone courses?

When implemented effectively and systematically across a curriculum, high impact practices (HIP) have the potential to increase student engagement and result in higher student achievement. The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is a four-year military university with a large liberal education core curriculum that provides the foundation for service and officership in the United States Air or Space Forces. Building on the liberal education core, the civil engineering (CE) major’s courses begin with the cornerstone field engineering course, paired with a two-week co-curricular experience for students at an Air or Space Force installation. With its motto “construct first, design later,” the field engineering course is an HIP and quintessential experiential learning course that gives students a practical frame-of-reference for future analysis and design courses. The CE major culminates with another HIP, the capstone design course, which gives students the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, building confidence in their ability to successfully apply those skills to the increasingly complex problems they will face after graduation. This book chapter provides a case study of the CE major at the USAFA, documenting the HIPs across the majors’ program, and highlighting the key elements and benefits of each.

This chapter employs a critical, reflexive, and holistic multiple-case study design at a Canadian polytechnic to demonstrate the value of authentic assessment for improving student self-efficacy across several business courses. Assessment strategies, instructional design techniques, coaching skills, and emotional affect are examined through instructor observation and reflection, yielding actionable insights for instructors and future research directions.

The Fashion Design Podcast Initiative educated students about podcasting by having the students share in the teaching activities as part of learning. The faculty implemented Lernen durch Lehren (LdL) or “Learning by Teaching” pedagogy and Bloom's revised taxonomy to encourage and support creativity, independence, confidence, and soft skills (i.e., teamwork, communication, decision making, research, exploration, and presentation skills) with emerging technologies. By creating educational podcasts, students developed skills in new technologies and disseminated information to educate others about fashion design. Faculty and students discovered the benefits and drawbacks with emerging technologies as teaching strategies.

Professional practice doctorates have learning outcomes and capstones that are very different than research doctorates. One type of capstone suited to a professional doctorate is a client-based dissertation in practice (DiP). In this type of capstone, students address a problem of practice faced by an institution or program (the client) in the student’s area of professional practice. Client-based problems of practice have the advantage of being authentic problems whose solution can have a positive impact on the client and those served by the client. For students, the scope of work to be done for the client includes: assessing the current practice; conducting a review of literature to identify best practices; gathering stakeholder perspectives; developing a strategic plan with proposed solutions or interventions; piloting elements of the proposed solution; and maintaining communication with the client. A case is described in which a student work team first authored an invitation to potential clients to propose a problem and then selected a client whose problem of practice was addressed as the DiP.

Standard doctoral preparation includes formal training in a specific academic discipline. In some instances, this training includes experience serving on departmental and university-wide committees. Structured leadership education, however, is most often a peripheral concern of the graduate school experience. For a significant number of doctoral students, formal leadership education is simply not considered to be of primary importance to the careers to which they aspire within higher education. Recognizing a need for increased leadership preparation in higher education, this chapter aims to highlight one systematic model for leadership education at the doctoral student level, the Rutgers University PreDoctoral Leadership Development Institute (PLDI).

Field-based education for environmental studies has been a foundational principle for the Environmental Studies program at Stockton University, which began in 1971. Located within the 445,000 hectare Pinelands National Reserve, on an 800-hectare campus near Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA, two professors in the program discuss our rationale and experiences teaching students about the environment within the environment. Expounding on the interdisciplinary literature of field-based learning, we present four unique case studies including local and regional experiences, as well as student learning abroad. The first case proposes that learning outdoors might be beneficial for students with learning disabilities. This is exemplified during a one-week field study to the 2.4 million hectare Adirondack Park & Preserve. The second instance reveals the benefits of working with local towns and environs acting as consultants in a multidisciplinary capstone experience. Next, we show how on-campus data collection and hypothesis formulation help students to learn about environmental design and statistical analysis. Finally, an international trip to the Caribbean opens the minds of students through a service learning project. While on campus, in town, across the United States or at an international destination, learning in the field gives students the opportunity to expand their knowledge through field-based active learning strategies.

Creating a mindset for research, including the development of professional research skills and critical thinking, is of the utmost importance in preparing students for the business world. To help faculty with this mindset, we discuss novel approaches for incorporating professional research and interactions into the undergraduate classroom, although the recommendations can apply to the entire curriculum. We describe three scenarios where our recommendations might apply – research/financial, tax, and accounting information system courses. Using a professional accounting research course and a financial course as examples, we start out broadly discussing a practitioner-coauthored professional case study approach that is applicable to any course, at any level. We then present a capstone undergraduate tax research course followed by an introduction of a specific project in an accounting information systems course. We include suggested syllabi, projects, and assessment rubrics throughout the discussion.

This chapter presents findings from a recently conducted process for obtaining Accounting Advisory Board (AAB) input related to Master of Accountancy curriculum of one university. Board members represent both large and small public accounting firms as well as corporate offices of Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations. AAB input includes perceptions of the relative importance of over 160 candidate topics for the courses making up the program’s infrastructure, as well as written comments noting other potential topics and pedagogical approaches to consider. Comparisons of topic rankings reveal a strong level of consistency among Board member types for the traditional accounting courses with structured content, as opposed to those courses involving more systems-related topics or having a wider range of specialized topics. Furthermore, the authors compare Board perceptions regarding topic necessity to those of faculty and note faculty reactions. Specifically, the authors find that faculty ranking consistency with the Board is weak, illustrating the importance of seeking curricular Board input on an ongoing basis. To “close the loop,” faculty incorporated many curriculum changes, involving both the topics to be covered and the overall approach to the course.