Rethinking Final Year Projects and Dissertations: Creative Honours and Capstone Projects
- Start date: 2010-08-01
- End date: 2012-07-31
- Amount: £200,000
- Status: in progress
- Funding Initiative: NTFS - Projects
The Honours Dissertation is the traditional undergraduate capstone and is often seen as the gold-standard of British HE. It provides an excellent apprenticeship for students wishing to undertake research degrees, but with increasing student diversity and growth of professional disciplines, it does not necessarily provide for all students and employers’ needs.
This proposal aims to transform institutional practices and assessment strategies through creative solutions for developing accessible alternative honours projects to meet the needs of students from different backgrounds, different subjects and different kinds of institution. Emphasis will be placed on employer- and community-based projects, as these align with HE policy and provide challenging settings for students, staff and stakeholders, particularly around appropriate assessment and rigorous comparability of standards. Such creative honours projects should extend independent learning and critical thinking, whilst enhancing students’ employability and capability as lifelong-learners.
Creative-Hops will work with five Subject Centres, students, professional bodies, and employer and community groups to provide guidance on the development, assessment and assurance of honours projects. It will assemble an international good practice resource-bank, capture the student experience, and develop and evaluate creative honours projects within University of Gloucestershire, culminating in National Showcase and Grand Findings dissemination events.
The team would love you to share your experience of developing creative honours projects. Please contact James Derounian, National Teaching Fellow (jderounian@glos.ac.uk) or Professor Mick Healey, Project Director (mhealey@glos.ac.uk) with details by 10 December 2010.
Examples are welcomed from all subject areas. They will be displayed on the project web site
- University of Gloucestershire