The MPA capstone course

Abstract

In the United States, Master of Public Administration Program (MPA) accreditations come through fulfilling the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and administration (NASPAA) accreditation standards. In 2009, NASPAA made some significant revisions to its accreditation standards. One of the major revisions is the requirement for programs to focus on outcome assessments. MPA programs who have gone through the revised 2009 (NASPAA ) accreditation standards and those who are currently preparing for their upcoming accreditations or reaccreditations will most probably agree that while developing student learning outcomes (SLOs) is a difficult task, assessing those (the learning outcomes) is a much more challenging endeavor. This article describes Northern Kentucky University’s MPA program’s journey in using the capstone course for assessing the program’s SLOs, recent changes in the requirements of the portfolio to better align with the program’s SLOs, use of Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive learning domain as the framework to document evidence of SLOs from the portfolios, some of the initial data on assessment that came out of the last two years of capstone offerings, and the ongoing challenges of utilizing the capstone course for such assessment purpose.