Role in the Curriculum
Cog468 was crafted in early 2002, added to the curriculum shortly thereafter, and first offered in the fall of 2003. It serves as the "capstone experience" for cognitive science majors. Highlights of the course:
- Students are required to propose and work on a modest individual capstone research project that justifiably relates to the computational/representational assumption and the integrative interdisciplinary assumption that constrain the field.
- The writing of a capstone paper that can be viewed as a sequence of transformations from a lightning draft, to a skeletal draft, to a substantial draft, to a final draft, each subject to constraints pertaining to finding sources and taking/revising notes.
- The crafting and presentating a capstone slideshow that highlights aspects of the project and the paper.
- A classic paper assignment which calls upon the students to mine four classic papers for knowledge subject to a set of constraints, and then to present the results of their mining to the class.
- The building of a capstone web site on which to place artifacts pertaining to the research project, development of the paper, the presentation, the classic paper reviews, and a few other activities.
- The Cognitive Science Capstone Exam, in which each student meets with members of the Cognitive Science Advisory Board for a "conversation" which sequentially focusses on each of the 11 cognitive science program learning outcomes.
- Once every 3 years, Computer and Inforation Literacy assessment.
- Once every 5-7 years, Writing Across the Curriculum assessment.