Susan Ray-Degges, interior design program coordinator, and Larry Peterson, director of accreditation, assessment and academic advising, co-wrote the chapter, “Wedding General Education and Professional Education Outcomes in Major-Specific Capstones,” in Judgments of Quality: Connecting Faculty Best Assessment with Student Best Work. The monograph was recently published by the Association for General and Liberal Studies.
Ray-Degges also wrote a mini-essay on “Interior Design Standards and Institutional Capstone Outcomes” for the volume.
As the introduction to Judgments of Quality notes, “the key question that gave rise to this undertaking was and is: ‘How do we assess our graduates’ best work in liberal education in ways that match the quality of the work we expect at the highest undergraduate levels of liberal learning?’”
Ray-Degges and Peterson, along with faculty from three other institutions, examined how different institutions (two research universities, one private professional college and a church-affiliated university) integrate liberal learning outcomes for general education in discipline-specific capstones. Their chapter argued that senior capstone courses in the major can provide excellent opportunities for end of career evaluation of student learning. Because they are culminating experiences, these capstones help students integrate learning from their disciplines and institution general education, encourage self-directed projects and, especially in professional programs, help the final transition to professional careers.
The chapter reviewed how the four institutions developed general education assessment in program specific capstones, how each campus planned and assessed those outcomes, and what barriers and opportunities campuses face when embedding assessment of general education outcomes in major-specific capstones.
Judgments of Quality (2013) is published by the Association for General and Liberal Studies and resulted from a nine-campus project that began in 2010 and was partially funded by the Lumina Foundation. The University of North Dakota and Portland State University were among the other campuses involved.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.
