ABSTRACT
Context The final year of many degree programmes, internationally, involves some form of capstone project. In UK and Irish Honours programmes, the traditionally recognized format is an individual research activity assessed by a written dissertation of 8000-12 000 words (Nicholson et al., 2010). This dissertation should enable students to demonstrate competence in a range of subject-based and transferable skills, and Honours-level knowledge and understanding (QAA, 2007; Harrison & Whalley, 2008), although its effectiveness has been questioned (Greenbank & Penketh, 2009). It is regarded as an
indicator of deep learning, independent research and valuable training for further academic study (James, 1998), but is it a relic of a previous academic era? There is evidence that the dissertation neither encourages students to be stakeholders in
university research, nor supports them in becoming, even peripherally, members of disciplinary research communities (Healey & Jenkins, 2009a). Various studies indicate that undergraduates believe themselves to be recipients of rather than producers of research (Jenkins et al., 1998; Zamorski, 2002; Brew, 2006). While Harrison and Whalley (2008) highlighted a number of positive issues around dissertations, they also reported concerns about a wide range of aspects of the process, noting that: “As a consequence, the quality of the dissertation is often less than it could have been” (Harrison & Whalley, 2008, p. 407). Arguably, the final-year dissertation in its UK and Irish form has remained somewhat
static while undergraduate programme objectives increasingly emphasize graduate employability, skills mobility and civic responsibility, alongside subject-based knowledge and understanding (Hennemann & Liefner, 2010). Graduates are expected to demonstrate autonomy, communicate clearly, engender and respond to change, be socially, economically and politically aware of local, national and global issues, and be prepared for portfolio careers (Harvey et al., 1997). Additional pressures come from the rise in dominance of the global knowledge economy, reduced financial support for institutions and rapid advances in information technology (Terenzini & Pascarella, 1998; Haigh, 2002; Simplicio, 2007; Lynch et al., 2008). We consider that all undergraduate Honours geography students should engage with primary research (Healey & Jenkins, 2009b), but we argue that higher-level cognitive, affective and inter-personal engagement is unlikely to be successful unless this research is relevant for the student, aligning with their academic and career interests, and is managed effectively under the constraints identified (Jenkins, 2003; Jenkins et al., 2003, 2007; Turner et al., 2008; Healey & Jenkins, 2009b; Jenkins & Healey, 2010). In this paper, we argue that the dissertation process has limited long-term benefits for
students individually, and it neither fulfils the broader ambitions of the research-teaching agenda nor the knowledge-transfer agenda of many departments. The authors consider it timely to examine alternative forms of the dissertation, offering the possibility of engaging with different pedagogic processes, student-student and student-supervisor relationships, and final summative products. As such, options are explored, already established in geography and other disciplines, which would present fit-for-purpose, relevant capstone experiences for geography students as alternatives to the traditional student-selected solo research project. The challenge for the geography community is to consider creatively the purpose, process, product and assessment of final-year research projects to align with the aspirations of 21st century geographers.
