| Course | PAC 499 Senior Capstone |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 8 |
| Paper type | Capstone summary and reflection |
| Length | About 1,216 words, 7 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Aspen University |
| Program | Psychology and Addiction Studies |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PAC 499 Module 8
The Second Day Matters: A Capstone Summary and Reflection on Practice
Student Name
Psychology and Addiction Studies Program, Aspen University
PAC 499: Senior Capstone
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
The Second Day Matters: A Capstone Summary and Reflection on Practice
This paper closes a capstone that began with a spreadsheet. In the first weeks of an internship at Bluegrass Recovery Services, the outpatient addiction program in Lexington, Kentucky, created for this course along with its staff and clients, Jordan noticed that nearly half of new clients were gone a month after intake. The first part of this paper summarizes what the project did about that. The second, longer part reflects on what it taught.
Summary of the Project
Simpson (2004) proposed that treatment works through a sequence: early engagement, seen in attendance and involvement, builds the relationship between client and program, which supports retention, which in turn supports better outcomes. On that model, Bluegrass's baseline, 52 percent of new clients retained at thirty days from January through June, meant that many clients left before treatment could do much for them. A literature review found few modifiable predictors of dropout, a weak alliance chief among them, evidence that prompting raises attendance and promising but thin evidence for peer support. Jordan designed a pilot in which a peer recovery specialist called each new client the day after intake, run in three monthly plan-do-study-act cycles from August through October and paired with interviews of eight clients and three peers.
Retention during the pilot was 65 percent, 46 of 71 clients, rising each month, though three months fall short of a run chart signal. The share of clients peers actually spoke with climbed sharply once a card at intake warned them the call was coming. Clients valued a call from someone in recovery, practical help with the first visit and the sense of being expected; some early calls felt scripted. Five recommendations followed: make the call standard, protect time for it, replace the script with prompts, test a text for unreached clients and keep measuring.
A Framework for Reflection
Schon (1983) studied how professionals actually think at work and argued that much of their skill lies not in applying theory but in a kind of knowing built into action. When something unexpected happens, skilled practitioners engage in reflection-in-action: they notice the surprise, rethink their understanding of the situation and try a new move while the work is still under way. Reflection-on-action happens afterward, when the practitioner looks back to understand what happened and what the experience means for future practice. Schon contrasted the tidy problems of textbooks with the messy, uncertain situations of real practice, where the problem itself must first be framed. Both kinds of reflection describe moments in this project.
Reflection-in-Action: The August Surprise
Before August began, Jordan had written down a forecast that peers would get through to ninety percent of new clients. By the second week, the call logs showed peers reaching barely three in four. The first reaction was to blame the phone numbers in the intake records. But when Jordan sat with the peers to look at the misses, the peers mentioned what clients had told them when they did connect later: they ignore numbers they do not recognize. The problem was not bad data but a reasonable habit that the call design had not anticipated. The intake card came out of that conversation, during the cycle rather than after it. In Schon's terms, the surprise forced a reframing of the problem, from a data problem to a design problem, while the work continued.
Reflection-on-Action: The Scripted Calls
The second moment came weeks later, during coding. Two clients said the call felt like a list. Jordan had written the call guide carefully, partly in response to criticism in the literature that peer roles are poorly described, and was proud of it. Looking back, the guide had solved a research problem, describing the intervention precisely, while creating a practice problem: it made peers sound less like themselves. The peers had already worked this out and loosened the guide on their own by September. Reflecting on this afterward, Jordan recognized a habit worth watching: valuing what can be written down over what the people doing the work already know.
Judging the Pilot Against a Standard
Taylor et al. (2014) found that most published improvement projects claiming to use plan-do-study-act cycles left out core features: iterative cycles, predictions stated in advance, small initial tests and data collected over time. Measured against that standard, the pilot did several things well. It ran three cycles, wrote predictions before each, changed the call in response to evidence and charted monthly data. It also fell short. The first cycle was not small; every new client received the call from day one, when a test with a few clients in the first week might have revealed the unanswered-call problem sooner. And three monthly data points were too few to read the chart with confidence, a limit that a longer baseline of monthly figures and a longer pilot could have eased.
What Jordan Meant to Learn and What Was Learned
A further lesson was not in the plan. Before the project, Jordan assumed, as several counselors had, that clients mandated by a court were the least likely to stay. Three of the eight interviewed clients were court-referred, and two described the call as the first time someone at the program spoke to them as a person rather than a case. The assumption did not survive contact with the people it was about.
| Intended learning | What actually happened |
|---|---|
| How to design and run a small study | Learned that running it was mostly logistics, relationships and problems no plan anticipated |
| How to analyze retention data | Learned to read a chart with rules and to resist celebrating two good months |
| How to conduct research interviews | Learned that clients said more when Jordan asked about the second day than about the call itself |
| How peer support works | Learned that the peers knew more about the problem than the literature did, and that a student's job was partly to listen |
Connection to Program Outcomes
The capstone drew on the program's coursework throughout: assessment and engagement skills in designing the call, research methods in the pilot and analysis, ethics in protecting clients' records and choices and an understanding of recovery as a process in which the first days carry real risk. It also required something the courses could only describe: working inside a program, with its schedules, staff and limits, to change one small thing.
Goals for Practice
Jordan has accepted a position as a case manager at a community program and has set three goals for the first year. First, to complete training and supervised practice in motivational interviewing by June, because the interviews showed how much early conversations matter. Second, to propose one small improvement cycle at the new workplace within six months, starting with a small test and a written prediction. Third, to ask, before assuming why a client has stopped coming, what the client would say.
Conclusion
The capstone set out to keep more new clients in treatment and found encouraging evidence that a brief call from a peer helps. Its larger lesson concerns practice: that problems must often be reframed in the middle of the work, that the people closest to a problem usually understand it first and that a careful plan is a starting point for learning, not a substitute for it.
References
Schon, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.
Simpson, D. D. (2004). A conceptual framework for drug treatment process and outcomes. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 27(2), 99-121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2004.06.001
Taylor, M. J., McNicholas, C., Nicolay, C., Darzi, A., Bell, D., & Reed, J. E. (2014). Systematic review of the application of the plan-do-study-act method to improve quality in healthcare. BMJ Quality & Safety, 23(4), 290-298. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2013-001862
PAC 499 Module 8 instructions, in plain terms
The final module of PAC 499 usually asks for a summary of the completed capstone and a reflection on your learning and professional growth. The Module 8 page in your Aspen course sets the requirements; this project is invented. Summarize the project briefly: problem, questions, method, findings, recommendations. Reflect on specific moments, not general feelings, using a named framework. Say what surprised you and what you would do differently. Compare what you meant to learn with what you learned. Connect the project to your program's outcomes. Set concrete goals for practice. Cite your sources in APA 7 and keep the summary shorter than the reflection. Write in the first person if your instructor allows it, since reflection is about your own thinking.
Inside the PAC 499 Module 8 example
The summary covers Bluegrass's 52 percent baseline, the three-month pilot, retention of 65 percent and the five recommendations. Schon's The Reflective Practitioner supplies the framework: reflection-in-action when August's reach rate fell short and Jordan had to rethink the call during the cycle, reflection-on-action when the scripted-call theme emerged in coding. The improvement-cycle review by Taylor and colleagues gives Jordan a yardstick for the pilot. Simpson's Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment article frames the summary. A four-row table compares intended and actual learning. Goals include training in motivational interviewing and running a second improvement cycle in a first job. A short section on program outcomes links the project to the coursework it drew on.
Where the marks sit in the PAC 499 Module 8 rubric
Final reflections earn credit for honest, specific reflection grounded in a framework, a concise summary and a clear connection between the project and future practice. This example keeps the summary short and reserves most of its length for reflection. It uses Schon's two kinds of reflection to examine particular moments, such as rethinking the call mid-cycle. It judges the pilot against Taylor and colleagues' standards, naming what went well and what fell short. The learning table shows growth beyond the plan, including a lesson about assumptions concerning clients under court orders. The goals are concrete and dated, and the reflection admits mistakes as well as successes. Judging the pilot against a published standard shows the student can evaluate their own work, not only describe it.
PAC 499 Module 8 help from the desk
Final reflections often list everything that went well. Choose a few specific moments, including mistakes, and examine them with a framework. Say what you assumed before and how the project changed it. Keep the summary concise; your instructor has read the earlier modules. Connect the project to your program's outcomes and to the professional you want to become. Set goals that are specific and dated. Thank your site and supervisor in the appropriate place, not in the reflection itself. Share the final report with the site; a capstone that reaches the people who can use it is worth more than one that ends with a grade. If you can, present the findings to staff in person; their questions will show what the project meant to them.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Aspen University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
More PAC 499 and Psychology and Addiction Studies sample papers
- PAC 499 Module 1: Choosing a Topic and Writing the Proposal
- PAC 499 Module 2: Problem Statement and Research Questions
- PAC 499 Module 3: Literature Review
- PAC 499 Module 4: Method and Evidence Plan
- PAC 499 Module 5: Gathering and Organizing Evidence
- PAC 499 Module 6: Analysis and Findings
- PAC 499 Module 7: Recommendations and Implementation
- PAC 115 Module 6: Terminology in Addiction Studies
- PAC 110 Module 6: Theories of Change and Motivation
- PAC 415 Module 6: Harm Reduction Ethics
- ADC 510 Module 7: Substance Abuse Policy
PAC 499 Module 8 questions, answered
What does PAC 499 Module 8 usually ask for?
Aspen's PAC 499 ends with the final report and reflection in this module, so summarizing the completed capstone and reflecting on learning with a framework is typical. Consult your Module 8 prompt.
What is reflection-in-action?
Schon described it as thinking about what one is doing while doing it, adjusting in the moment, as distinct from reflection-on-action, which looks back afterward.
How long should the summary be in a capstone reflection?
Brief. Restate the problem, method, findings and recommendations in a few paragraphs and give most of the space to reflection.
Where can I find a free PAC 499 Module 8 sample paper?
This page carries the full final paper: a capstone summary, a reflection organized with Schon's framework and goals for practice.
What should a capstone reflection include?
Specific moments of learning examined with a framework, assumptions that changed, mistakes, a comparison of intended and actual learning and concrete goals.