All students enrolled in baccalaureate degrees in British Columbia are required to meet an academic breadth requirement. Cap Core invites students to design a personalized learning program integrating disciplinary perspectives from across the university. It ensures that Capilano University graduates have the foundational and professional knowledge and transferrable skills required to succeed in academia and in their careers.
Common intellectual experiences, such as Cap Core, have been identified as a high impact educational practice. Cap Core is designed to provide students with transferrable skills, including literacy, numeracy, communication, problem solving, critical analysis, synthesis and evaluation. These skills will enable graduates to stand out from the competition in the job market and to be flexible, no matter which direction their career takes them. Employers need educated and trained graduates, but also socially, interpersonally, environmentally aware individuals, with broad-based knowledge and understanding, who are critical and creative thinkers, effective communicators and problem solvers.
As the University moved towards implementing general education framework, a variety of models were considered. An April 2015 Report on General Education, submitted to the Vice President Academic and Provost, outlined five possible general education models. As the model chosen for Capilano was the Core Curriculum Model, Cap Core was selected as a fitting name.
The Core Curriculum Model is typically delivered in the introductory stages of a student's course of study in order to provide a strong foundation on which to build future student success. However, many universities that follow the Core Curriculum Model are recognizing that distributing the core curriculum over the student's entire course of study rather than concentrating it in the first year leads to improved student learning. Hence the decision to introduce the Foundation, Integration and Professional Practice elements spread across the entirety of students' undergraduate education.
The Foundational Courses (six credit requirement) ensure students attain the basic literacy and numeracy skills necessary to communicate and reason effectively at an undergraduate level.
The Integration Courses (eighteen credit requirement) provide students with deeper knowledge and understanding of Culture and Creativity, Self and Society and Science and Technology from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Students will explore ways of knowing, including Indigenous ways of knowing, from across disciplines at Capilano University.
Professional Practice (six credit requirement) is an opportunity for students to put into practice everything they've learned in their program. The required Experiential and Capstone courses are typically completed in the final year of a student's studies.
Experiential learning is learning through reflection on doing. It combines direct experience with focused reflection. Field-based experiential learning includes internships, practicums, cooperative learning, and service learning. Classroom-based experiential learning can incorporate case studies, simulations, role-plays, reflective portfolios, arts-based learning community-based research, and/or project-based research.
A capstone is a culminating course or project integrating the knowledge, skills, and values acquired during a student's academic studies. While capstone courses can take a variety of forms, students are typically required to complete a significant intellectual project either individually or in groups.
For example, students may enroll in a course examining a complex issue in their field of study where they complete research papers or projects on the same problem or question that require them to draw on prior learning and experiences. Students might be invited to create a digital portfolio synthesizing and reflecting on their previous work in order to showcase their learning alongside their emerging professional or academic goals. Others students may combine a professional practicum with a directed studies course integrating and expanding the knowledge and skills acquired in their practicums.
No matter what form a CapU Capstone course takes, this culminating learning experience is an exciting opportunity for students to put all of their learning into practice in preparation for life as a Capilano University graduate.
Regardless of whether a course has multiple Cap Core designations, students must complete 30.00 credits of Cap Core: 6.00 Foundation credits, 18.00 Integration credits, and 6.00 Professional Practice. Using the example above, a student who takes MATH 108 as their Numeracy course cannot also use it as a Science and Technology Integration course.