Replication Data for: Examining Senior Seminar and Curricular Reform at an HBCU

This paper uses the department's capstone course to examine how four curricular changes impacted student learning. Adopting methodology from the literature, student transcripts are used to discover the curricular paths to the capstone; syllabi are used to discern the skills that students should have acquired along that path; and then the capstone projects themselves are assessed. Using data from Spring 2016 to Spring 2019, I find that students were not following the intended curricular path, and that the intended curricular path did not seem to impact the quality of final capstone projects. Instead, student learning was heavily driven by the faculty's commitment to a shared goal of 'black political science' and individual differences in how faculty defined 'good work'.

本研究依托某院系的顶石课程（capstone course），探究四项课程改革对学生学习的影响。本研究借鉴现有文献中的研究方法：首先通过学生修课记录追溯学生通往顶石课程的实际修读路径；借助教学大纲（syllabi）明确学生在该路径中应掌握的技能；随后对顶石课程最终作品本身进行评估。本研究采集了2016年春季至2019年春季的相关数据，结果发现：学生并未遵循预设的课程修读路径，且预设课程修读路径似乎并未对顶石课程最终作品的质量产生显著影响。与之相反，学生的学习成果极大程度上受两大因素驱动：一是全体教职员工对"黑人政治学"这一共同目标的坚守，二是不同教员对"优质作业"的定义存在个体差异。