Anyone willing to share their capstone experience/sample?

[Amberlinjeanne]

I have my academic advising appt today to get clearance to enroll in LIB-495 for next term and finish up my bachelors degree at TESU. Naturally, I’m a little
nervous about it after reading so many posts that expand on how labor intensive it is. I have a few ideas for topics and just like to feel prepared. Is anyone willing to share an example of their paper OR the rubric? I just like to get an idea of the layout. Feel free to PM me if you don’t want to post publicly. Thanks in advance !

[studyingfortests]

The thing to know about LIB-495 is that while it looks intimidating at first, the way the course is designed, it really isn't.

The entire course is structured to help you write the capstone, one section at a time. You turn in each section and the professor grades and comments on it. You go back and make the changes or do the rewrites the professor suggests on each section, then the last assignment is stitching together the sections you have already written and submitted, making the table of contents, consolidating the references list, and doing the annotations for each source.

PM me your email and I'll send you the sample Capstone that my professor used (and I'll look to see if I have the rubric as well.)

While I am at it, I will put in a recommendation to sign up for the capstone with Dr. Augustus Black. He came recommended to me, and that recommendation was well deserved. He is probably the best, most caring, most involved professor I have had anywhere, graduate school included. He will absolutely help you become a better writer, and is incredibly generous with his time. Make use of his offer to call him for input... I did so repeatedly, and he welcomed it. The assistance I got from him was so useful in so many ways. I can't recommend him more highly.

[k-k-k-katy]

The thing to know about LIB-495 is that while it looks intimidating at first, the way the course is designed, it really isn't.  

The entire course is structured to help you write the capstone, one section at a time.  You turn in each section and the professor grades and comments on it.  You go back and make the changes or do the rewrites the professor suggests on each section, then the last assignment is stitching together the sections you have already written and submitted, making the table of contents, consolidating the references list, and doing the annotations for each source.

PM me your email and I'll send you the sample Capstone that my professor used (and I'll look to see if I have the rubric as well.)

While I am at it, I will put in a recommendation to sign up for the capstone with Dr. Augustus Black. He came recommended to me, and that recommendation was well deserved.  He is probably the best, most caring, most involved professor I have had anywhere, graduate school included. He will absolutely help you become a better writer, and is incredibly generous with his time.  Make use of his offer to call him for input... I did so repeatedly, and he welcomed it.  The assistance I got from him was so useful in so many ways.  I can't recommend him more highly.

I have also heard that when you get each assignment back with the suggested changes, make the changes right away, and ask the mentor to look at it again to see if the changes were in line with the suggestions (don't put this off until the end).  If you stay on top of the assignments like this after every submission, it should make the final paper (when you put all of the separate assignments all together) really straight-forward and do-able.

[Dumber]

The thing to know about LIB-495 is that while it looks intimidating at first, the way the course is designed, it really isn't.  

The entire course is structured to help you write the capstone, one section at a time.  You turn in each section and the professor grades and comments on it.  You go back and make the changes or do the rewrites the professor suggests on each section, then the last assignment is stitching together the sections you have already written and submitted, making the table of contents, consolidating the references list, and doing the annotations for each source.

PM me your email and I'll send you the sample Capstone that my professor used (and I'll look to see if I have the rubric as well.)

While I am at it, I will put in a recommendation to sign up for the capstone with Dr. Augustus Black. He came recommended to me, and that recommendation was well deserved.  He is probably the best, most caring, most involved professor I have had anywhere, graduate school included. He will absolutely help you become a better writer, and is incredibly generous with his time.  Make use of his offer to call him for input... I did so repeatedly, and he welcomed it.  The assistance I got from him was so useful in so many ways.  I can't recommend him more highly.

I ditto everything said. I had dr Hayden and she was great. I will go with her but She does have a once weekly zoom meeting where she explains almost everything to get an almost perfect grade. Some people hate it - I loved it - it turned out to my best academic experience. Plus, you get to meet other students and to exchange ideas with them.

[studyingfortests]

I have also heard that when you get each assignment back with the suggested changes, make the changes right away, and ask the mentor to look at it again to see if the changes were in line with the suggestions (don't put this off until the end).  If you stay on top of the assignments like this after every submission, it should make the final paper (when you put all of the separate assignments all together) really straight-forward and do-able.

Yes, it really depends on how major the changes are. With my first assignment, I was way out of practice with APA, and previous professors were not at all picky, so my paper was an enormous mess and I got like a 74 on it.  Dr. Black said to call, and when he called, I asked how he was doing and he said "I was doing fine until I read your paper!" (in a joking way.)  He then patiently went over everything and invited me to fix and resubmit the paper. The second submission got a 96. I was happy with that, and I made the (by then minor) changes he suggested.

I did make the recommended changes on each assignment as I got the feedback, but didn't feel the need to resubmit because the changes were pretty clear.

We ended up having some pretty lengthy conversations and he acknowleged that, as detailed as the APA manual is, some things come down to individual interpretation.  When I made a case for a few specific implementations of APA and how they were actually described in the APA manual, he quickly acknowledged that much of this simply interpretation.  I like his perspective, which is basically to interpret APA rules as strictly as possible, because then you'll never be in trouble.

I do agree with staying on top and doing it when it's fresh. There's enough to do with combining and creating a single reference list that having the rest done is a big load off of one's mind.

[MrPanda]

Did you use the References system in Word or did you install some other program?

[bjcheung77]

You may want to review some things on the Forum and Wiki by doing a search, here's a link: https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/TESU_Capstone

[Amberlinjeanne]

Update: this was the hardest class I have ever taken and it requires A LOT of mental stamina to make it to the finish line. Including the final annotated bibliography, my final word count came to nearly 12k words. I kind of got into it with my mentor in the first few weeks of the class, but we eventually came to an understanding and I really feel like I earned the grade I got. THANK YOU to everyone who sent me PMs with helpful tips, it made all the difference! I passed with a 98 and am THRILLED to be done ?????

I took SOS 110 at the same time and if I didn’t work ahead I would have drowned. I will probably post an updated review of my experience with both of these classes in another thread.

[spohara]

Update: this was the hardest class I have ever taken and it requires A LOT of mental stamina to make it to the finish line. Including the final annotated bibliography, my final word count came to nearly 12k words. I kind of got into it with my mentor in the first few weeks of the class, but we eventually came to an understanding and I really feel like I earned the grade I got. THANK YOU to everyone who sent me PMs with helpful tips, it made all the difference! I passed with a 98 and am THRILLED to be done ?????

I took SOS 110 at the same time and if I didn’t work ahead I would have drowned. I will probably post an updated review of my experience with both of these classes in another thread.

Hey congrats on being finished.

I'm just getting started on my capstone and I'm curious how your experience compares because it seems the capstone has undergone quite a few revisions and I'm not sure how recently the latest is.  Seems like around 2016-2017 they made a change from requiring original research to not requiring it, then sometime later they discouraged it because of the review process.  Now, at least with my mentor, the research part is essentially gone entirely, and it has become a 'critical literature review'.  Basically just chapter 1 and 2 of a normal research paper.  Seems easier in some aspects, but I don't think I've ever done that many pages worth of lit review.  Was that similar to your experience?

Also for other CS majors, my mentor would not allow a technical paper, said we had to approach CS from a sociological perspective.  For anyone pre-planning a topic, keep that in mind.

[Amberlinjeanne]

Update: this was the hardest class I have ever taken and it requires A LOT of mental stamina to make it to the finish line. Including the final annotated bibliography, my final word count came to nearly 12k words. I kind of got into it with my mentor in the first few weeks of the class, but we eventually came to an understanding and I really feel like I earned the grade I got. THANK YOU to everyone who sent me PMs with helpful tips, it made all the difference! I passed with a 98 and am THRILLED to be done ?????

I took SOS 110 at the same time and if I didn’t work ahead I would have drowned. I will probably post an updated review of my experience with both of these classes in another thread.

Hey congrats on being finished.

I'm just getting started on my capstone and I'm curious how your experience compares because it seems the capstone has undergone quite a few revisions and I'm not sure how recently the latest is.  Seems like around 2016-2017 they made a change from requiring original research to not requiring it, then sometime later they discouraged it because of the review process.  Now, at least with my mentor, the research part is essentially gone entirely, and it has become a 'critical literature review'.  Basically just chapter 1 and 2 of a normal research paper.  Seems easier in some aspects, but I don't think I've ever done that many pages worth of lit review.  Was that similar to your experience?

Also for other CS majors, my mentor would not allow a technical paper, said we had to approach CS from a sociological perspective.  For anyone pre-planning a topic, keep that in mind.

My major is psychology so it’s a bit different I’m sure but you’re on the money here. This was the most frustrating part of the whole project. It seems like he wanted us to repeat ourselves incessantly and the structure feels very much like “here’s what I’m about to tell you, how I’m about to tell you, why it’s important and finally - 18 pages later, I will finally tell you what I said I would.” Once I figured out he didn’t want any critical thinking or original thought and mostly just wants you to follow the structure of the template exactly, it became a lot easier. There’s nothing original about it - it’s exclusively synthesis of information and some persuasion. I picked a controversial topic so that might have been where I ran into issues but overall I am very proud I survived and emerged with my best grade yet. Hang in there and follow instructions and you will come out on top!