Improving Student Success in the Capstone Seminar: The Importance of a Prior Research Intensive Experience

Abstract

Most undergraduate social science programs require the completion of a capstone experience before graduation. Despite the recognized potential of capstone courses to deepen learning, many students do not perform well. The present study examines several factors that may prepare students for academic success in a fairly typical capstone course for undergraduate political science majors. We hypothesize that students who earn high grades in research intensive courses will also earn high grades in the capstone course, even after controlling for other factors related to academic performance. Our results show that successfully completing research intensive training in just one course, even above and beyond the introductory methods course, improves capstone performance. We conclude with a discussion of how our findings lend further support to arguments in favor of “scaffolding” political science curricula to funnel students from less to more intensive research experiences as they move toward the completion of their degrees.

Keywords:

• Capstone seminar
• research methods
• undergraduate research
• political science curriculum
• student success

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ms. Laurie Peary for her assistance with this project and also gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1 This project was reviewed and approved by the SUNY Potsdam Institutional Review Board (project 17-S-2006).

2 Our preliminary analysis also included tests for the effects of several other variables on capstone success. These included grades in introductory statistics and introduction to comparative politics (which features some methods skills). We also examined size of the capstone seminar. However, we dropped these from the final model as they did not improve our model fit to the data.

3 Our data do not allow us to test the extent of statistical mediation suggested by Model 2. Mediation in this case would assume that an introductory research methods course was completed before the research intensive upper-division coursework. However, this sequencing was not required in our program, and we do not have the data to establish the exact sequence in which these courses were taken. Our data only indicate which courses were completed before the capstone seminar. Nonetheless, we believe this is the most plausible explanation for the differences in the coefficients for methods grade and cumulative GPA between Model 1 and Model 2.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert A. Hinckley

Robert A. Hinckley is Associate Professor of Politics at SUNY Potsdam. He received his PhD from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Hinckley’s research interests include comparative political behavior and political psychology, and he teaches undergraduate courses in comparative politics and research methods.

Jack McGuire

Jack McGuire is Associate Professor of Politics at SUNY Potsdam. He received his PhD from Washington State University. McGuire’s research interests focus on state and local government and American political institutions. He teaches undergraduate courses in American politics and research methods.

Tara L. Danforth

Tara L. Danforth recently graduated from SUNY Potsdam. As an undergraduate, she completed a Kilmer research apprenticeship that focused on student academic success. She currently attends graduate school at the University of New Hampshire.