Capstone Seminar Format—Comprehensive Exam
Comprehensive exam preparation
Students participating in the seminar are organized into study or preparation groups. These groups are designed to encourage the students to share information and approaches to exam preparation.
Each time the capstone seminar is convened, the students have the opportunity to bring exam research questions, exam answers for review and sharing, and any additional information or questions they have related to their preparation.
Exam questions
Graduate students electing the capstone comprehensive exam option receive a set of sample questions that address the content of the courses in the program core as well as the concentration core that they each have been enrolled in during the course of their graduate program. In addition, they develop an exam question that addresses the scholarly content associated with a special area of interest.
The special area of interest question development must be situated within the areas of expertise that the four professors who are facilitating the four sections of the capstone project seminar during the semester in which the graduate students are enrolled. At the beginning of the semester, the four professors publish a list of their areas of expertise from which the students may choose to develop their special area of interest questions. For example, if the combined areas of expertise of the four professors included toddler development, kindergarten classroom structure, elementary mathematics and classroom discourse, elementary language arts curricula, early childhood literacy, middle grades children's literature, middle level block scheduling and early adolescent development, then the graduate students enrolled in the ED 6790 capstone would develop their area of interest questions in one of these areas of expertise, e.g. a question focusing on the psycho-social development of early adolescent females would fit into the area of expertise identified as early adolescent development. The four professors who are facilitating the capstone seminars reach consensus regarding the suitability of each special area of interest question that is developed.
Each comprehensive exam will include:
- Question I: Program Core Study
- Question II: Concentration Core Study
- Question III: Special Area of Interest (developed by individual students)
Sample comprehensive exam questions
Sample 1: Building a Middle School: A case study
You have been hired by a school district to teach in their junior high school. Because you are familiar with the developmental appropriateness that a middle school model would offer, you approach your principal about the feasibility of making a transition from a junior high school structure to a middle school structure. Impressed with your knowledge and expertise, our principal invites you to present your argument to the superintendent and the school board.
This question response should be your argument for the developmental suitability of middle school structure, pedagogy and curriculum.
Scheduling the comprehensive exam and exam administration
The scheduling of the comprehensive exam is arrived at by the professors who are facilitating ED 6790 seminars each semester and session. Generally, their scheduling falls within these parameters: at the conclusion of the capstone seminar, weeks 10-12 of the fall and spring semesters and mid-July for the seminars that are scheduled to begin during summer 1 and conclude during summer 2 sessions. Students are given one hour per question to write their responses. Typically, the professors offer the participating students one of two schedules to complete the comprehensive exam:
Schedule 1—Questions 1-3 are administered on a Saturday.
Schedule 2—Questions 1-2 are administered in the first week of the comprehensive exam time frame during the regularly scheduled seminar time. Question 3 is administered in the second week of the comprehensive exam time frame during the regularly scheduled seminar time.
Students have the option of completing their 3 exam questions in a supervised computer lab or in a classroom where they write their exam questions in a blue book. The same holds true for students who write revisions for their exam questions.
Comprehensive exam grading
One reviewer is a designer of the student’s graduate unit; the other reviewer will be the faculty member directing the seminar. Each question on the exam is be graded pass (A), revise (I or incomplete), or fail (E). Those students whose exams are rated “revise” receive an incomplete until the exam meets expectations. This grade will be changed to “pass” once the student successfully completes the exam questions that were rated as "revise" at a "pass" level. The graduate student will be allowed to write a "passing" revision two additional times after the initial effort. Times for revision writing must necessarily be scheduled within one year after the comprehensive exam is taken. If the comprehensive exam is not revised to a passing level within one year, the grade on the exam will lapse to an E or fail. The grade received on the comprehensive exam is the grade assigned to the capstone seminar, ED 6790.
Reviewers must reach consensus regarding the student’s successful completion of the comprehensive exam prior to assigning the final grade for the exam and the seminar.
If they are unable to reach consensus, a third reviewer will be invited to review the portfolio. In these cases, the final grade will be the grade assigned by 2 of the 3 reviewers.