D302 Implementing and Evaluating E-Learning Solutions, catalog number LXD 6055, is the five-CU final capstone course, covering the implement, test, refine, reflect and report phases of design-based research. Five competency units signals what it is: the largest single course in the sequence and the one where everything either comes together or does not. The distinguishing feature of this course is that reality has now happened. Participants behaved unexpectedly, something broke, the sample was smaller than planned. The scored skill is reporting that honestly and still producing a defensible contribution, rather than writing the study you intended to run.
Design-based research reports what happened, including the awkward parts
A conventional experimental report has an incentive to look clean. Design-based research has the opposite incentive, and students trained on the first pattern often suppress exactly the material this course rewards.
Iteration is the point. If the first cycle showed learners skipping the practice activity, that is a finding, and the revision you made because of it is data about the design principle rather than a confession of a mistake. A report describing a single smooth implementation with no changes has either concealed the cycles or failed to gather anything that could have prompted one. Both read badly.
Negative and mixed results are similarly safe here, provided the reasoning holds. A solution that improved confidence but not performance tells you something specific about the mechanism you assumed. A solution nobody used tells you something about the context you underestimated. What is scored is whether your conclusions match your evidence, not whether the evidence flattered your design.
The reflection phase is the one students most often treat as decoration. It is not a paragraph about how much you learned. It is an analytic account of what you would now do differently and what the experience revealed about your assumptions as a designer, supported by specific moments in the study. Reflection aspects are scored on evidence just like every other aspect.
Turning the rubric aspects into a report plan
WGU keeps the scoring detail for D302 in your Course of Study rather than in the public catalog. This rubric is usually the longest you will meet in the sequence, and every aspect still scores independently against a three-point scale with a 2 required. A five-CU course with a long aspect list is exactly where students lose an aspect to omission rather than to weakness.
Build the report skeleton from the aspect list before you write a word, and check it against the list again before submission. Missing sections in a long document are the most preventable return in the whole programme.
The word budget, worked. Assume twelve scored aspects and directions asking for around 6,000 words. Reserve 400 words for an introduction restating problem, question and solution, and 200 for a conclusion. That leaves about 5,400 for scored content, or 450 an aspect. Then weight it. Three aspects reliably need more than the mean: the results aspect, the discussion aspect where you interpret against the literature, and the refinement aspect describing what changed between cycles and why. Take 70 words from each of the nine remaining aspects and add 210 to each of those three. The total is unchanged and the analytical core has room.
A pacing rule for a five-CU course: draft the results section as soon as the first cycle is complete. Students who wait until all data are collected face a large writing job at the point when their term is running out, and the queue for evaluation is not something you control.
A structure that fits a design-based research report
Where a template or task-specified structure exists, follow it precisely, since long documents are scored against expected sections. Where the arrangement is yours, this order matches how implementation and evaluation aspects are usually written.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Problem, question and solution | Brief restatement of the work carried forward from the earlier capstone courses | Usually light-scored, but the report has to stand alone |
| Implementation account | What was actually delivered, to whom, when, and what deviated from plan | Scored for fidelity reporting; unreported deviation is the classic failure |
| Data collected | What was gathered in each cycle, from how many participants, using which instruments | Scored for completeness including what was not obtained |
| Results by cycle | Findings presented cycle by cycle rather than pooled | Scored for showing the iteration; pooled results hide the design work |
| Refinements | Each change, the finding that prompted it and the principle behind it | The aspect that distinguishes design-based research from a pilot report |
| Discussion | Interpretation against the literature from the first capstone course | Scored for connecting back; results with no return to the review lose it |
| Design principles | What transfers beyond this setting, stated as conditional claims | Scored for appropriate generality; overreaching is penalised |
| Limitations | Sample, setting, duration, measurement and researcher position | Scored for specificity, not for length |
| Reflection | What you would do differently, evidenced by moments in the study | Scored as analysis, not as sentiment |
| Recommendations | What the organisation or setting should do next, with owners and measures | Scored for actionability |
| References and appendices | APA reference list, instruments, consent materials, artefact evidence | Scored where named; missing instruments weaken the method aspects |
Report cycles separately even when the results are similar. Pooling removes the evidence that iteration happened, which is the evidence several aspects are looking for.
Evidence craft in a final capstone report
This is the longest evidence-handling job in the programme, and precision matters more than volume.
- Report participation exactly. Invited, consented, started, completed. A dropout pattern is a finding and hiding it weakens the whole report.
- Separate results from interpretation into different sections. Merging them is the fastest way to lose both aspects.
- Present qualitative data as evidence, with enough context that a reader can judge your reading of it. Anonymised quotations with role and cycle attached work well.
- Show the instruments in an appendix. A method aspect is much easier to score when the evaluator can see what was asked.
- Return to the literature from your review in the discussion. Findings that agree, findings that do not, and what your setting adds.
- State design principles conditionally. In settings where learners have no protected time, this approach worked because of a stated mechanism is a defensible claim; a universal recommendation is not.
- Use APA throughout and keep participant identifiers out of every section, including appendices and screenshots.
The strongest final reports contain a paragraph acknowledging the researcher's own position. You designed the intervention and evaluated it, which is normal in design-based research and is also a source of bias. Naming it and describing what you did to limit it is a mark of the judgment this capstone is meant to produce.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Aspects score independently, and with a long rubric the commonest cause of a return is an aspect with no corresponding section rather than a weak one.
- Every scored aspect has a visible heading using the rubric's noun, checked twice against the list.
- Implementation is reported as it happened, with deviations named.
- Results appear cycle by cycle, and each refinement names the finding behind it.
- The discussion returns to the literature rather than restating results.
- Conclusions are proportionate to the sample and duration.
- Reflection is analytic and anchored to specific moments in the study.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted without a grade penalty, which is worth remembering on a document of this length: a returned capstone is a revision, not a failure. The cost is the calendar. In a six-month flat-rate term, a final capstone returned late in the term is the difference between finishing and paying for another term to close one course.
Where D302 sits alongside a proctored objective assessment, the boundary does not move: we prepare only, never sit an assessment, and never ask for portal credentials.
Six mistakes that cost time in D302
- Reporting the study you planned. If the second cycle had four participants instead of twelve, say so. Evaluators find the discrepancy in the data section anyway.
- Pooling the cycles. Combined results erase the iteration, and the refinement aspect then has nothing to score.
- Concluding beyond the evidence. A small single-setting study supports conditional claims. Universal recommendations invite a challenge to otherwise sound work.
- Skipping the return to the literature. A discussion that only restates findings loses the aspect that asks you to interpret them against what was already known.
- Writing the reflection as gratitude. Reflection aspects want analysis of your own assumptions, supported by things that actually happened.
- Starting the report after data collection ends. Six thousand words plus appendices at the end of a term, with evaluation queues ahead of you, is how a finished study misses the term anyway.
How support works on this course
Send the rubric from your Course of Study, the task directions and your work from the earlier capstone courses. What comes back is a report skeleton mapped aspect by aspect, a results structure that preserves the cycles, a discussion plan that returns to your own literature review, conditional design principles that will survive scrutiny, and a reflection framework anchored to evidence rather than to feeling.
On a five-CU final course the most valuable support is usually scheduling rather than prose. Getting the results section drafted early, the appendices assembled as you go, and the aspect checklist run twice is what keeps a completed study from missing the term it was completed in.
Questions students ask about D302
Is D302 the same course as LXD 6055?
My solution did not produce the improvement I expected. Is that a problem?
Can you write the capstone report for me?
Final capstone report and a long rubric to satisfy?
Send your Course of Study rubric, the task directions and your data. You get an aspect-mapped skeleton, a cycle-by-cycle results plan and a schedule that clears the evaluation queue.
Where D302 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 3 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.