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MSN Handbook

Nursing Practicum and Capstone

The purpose of the practicum’s individualized learning experience is to enable you to develop an original comprehensive nursing capstone project on a topic of professional or personal interest. The practicum is project-based and during the practicum you will focus on an issue, create a viable solution through research, design and development quality improvement initiative that is substantial original applied project of your own authorship. This course requires inter-professional collaboration with disciplines outside of nursing and nursing practicum experience within a practice environment and must include inter-professional collaboration. The nursing education, forensic nursing, and public health nursing specialization tracks must include a minimum of 20 hours of direct-care experience.

 

Enrolling in the Capstone

You may enroll in the Capstone Project after you have completed all courses within the MSN curriculum and Practicum courses. Upon enrolling in the Capstone course, you will be assigned a Capstone Instructor who will remain with you throughout the remainder of your program. Your Capstone Instructor will be a select member of the Aspen faculty whose area of expertise has been chosen to most closely align with your Capstone Project interests. The Capstone Project course is comprised of:

  • Project Proposal: Your project design should focus on a quality improvement of a process, policy or procedural. You will create a proposal or presentation focused on a specific issue and with a focus on a specific target audience.
    • Design or develop a curriculum
    • Implement and evaluate an educational activity
    • Create a systemic review of the literature to support evidence-based change
    • Design and implement a change project (e. g. proposal for a change in process)
    • Write a grant
    • Develop a policy and work with leaders to implement it.
    • Analyze systematically the healthcare system in another geographic region
    • Develop or revise an existing business or marketing plan within a nursing or healthcare organization
    • Advocate for legislative change for an issue important to nursing
    • Write a publishable journal article
    • Create a professional conference poster
    • Design an informatics solution to a nursing problem

    When you have chosen a topic, and received approval from your Capstone Instructor, you can proceed to complete the capstone proposal template. The template is designed to guide you through specific steps that will become the blueprint to follow for the rest of your project. The template includes project title, description, rationale, personal and professional expectations, project goals, analysis of the literature, procedure, and evaluation. Refine your proposal based upon input from your Capstone Instructor. This step can be accomplished through classroom communication until the Capstone Instructor is satisfied that all requirements for the proposal have been met. The final proposal can be submitted through the classroom drop box for formal approval and acknowledgement that it is complete in all aspects.
  • Capstone: The final Capstone Project/Master’s Thesis manuscript will be graded by the Capstone Instructor; however, he or she may select to forward your project to either the Dean of Nursing and Health Sciences or Director of Graduate Nursing Programs for a second opinion and evaluation. The capstone project will include 5 Chapters, utilize a minimum of 35 sources, and overall length will be 30 written pages excluding the title, abstract, references and appendices pages.
  • Weekly Updates: Although sections of your capstone project are submitted via the classroom drop box to your Capstone Instructor as you complete them and you must to participate in the classroom and share your reflections and progress with classmates through required activity reports are certain junctures as required in the classroom assignments.

    The Oral Presentation of the Capstone Project will be conducted during the Capstone Course. The Oral Presentation marks the culmination of many months of formal study and intensive research on the part of the student. This Oral Presentation affords the student an opportunity to demonstrate the depth and breadth of his/her knowledge in a field of specialization, ability to conduct research and to present the findings before his or her Capstone Instructor and sometimes invited guests. The Oral Presentation, the audience will have the opportunity to question the work, critically.

    The Oral Presentation should last about 30 minutes and will be facilitated via synchronous telecommunication such as video conferencing media. Other faculty and administrative members of Aspen University might also be present. It is recommended that individuals within your community who have an interest in the topic or who may be impacted by the findings be invited to attend. For the first twenty minutes, you will present your Capstone Project, summarizing the aspects of the project that were reported in the formal paper. Visual aids must be included, and may be either a PowerPoint®, Prezi® or poster board. For the final ten minutes, the Capstone Instructor and any Aspen faculty present will have an opportunity to question you about various aspects of the project. At this time the portfolio may also be discussed, and preparation for the comprehensive exam considered. If time allows, other audience members may also ask questions/seek clarification.

    If the oral presentation is unsatisfactory, the student will be given one opportunity to improve performance but the Dean of Nursing and Health Sciences or her designee will join the Capstone Instructor. If a second “unsatisfactory” presentation is delivered, you will receive a failing grade for this course, which falls under the policies and procedures of Aspen University.
  • Final Capstone Project: Your Final Capstone Project/Master’s Thesis submission must be professionally prepared and free of typographical, spelling and grammatical errors. The formatting protocol of the American Psychological Association (APA) is the approved format for Aspen University. The specific length of the formal document may vary somewhat depending upon the topic selected, the use of tables, matrices, graphs, or other visual supplements.

    The following sections should be included:
    • Title page
    • Abstract
    • Table of Contents
    • Chapter 1 - Introduction (Background, Significance, Justification, Purpose)
    • Chapter 2 - Literature Review
    • Chapter 3 - Method (as appropriate for your project---may include project design, procedures, evaluation methods, etc.)
    • Chapter 4 - Discussion of findings and Recommendations
    • Chapter 5 - Conclusion
    • References
    • Appendices, as appropriate

    The Final Capstone Project/Master’s Thesis submission for dissemination should be prepared using the Microsoft Office suite (Word®, Excel®, and PowerPoint® as appropriate), appropriately paginated using a twelve-point standard style font such as Times New Roman, Century Schoolbook, etc. Although the foregoing project format requirements may suffice for most capstone projects, there may be some appropriate variations approved by your Capstone Instructor.

    Throughout the Capstone course, you will need to submit iterations of the chapter sections as you complete them to your Capstone Instructor for feedback. Do not wait until the end of the course to submit one completed paper and expect it to meet the rigorous expectations of this course.