TESU Liberal Arts Capstone mentor feedback

[SweetSecret]

Awww man. I had Dr. Caicco for my capstone course and I just sent him a request for a grad school recommendation letter yesterday. :-(

I know you did... we were in the same class. ;-) Who knows, maybe he'll change his mind. I got a message saying I had the highest grade in the class though, & he was adament about sticking to his rule with me.

[jsd]

if anyone is willing to share the "sample papers" they were provided in class (or brave enough to share their own work!) or any other information about the course, that'd be great too

I want to follow up on this, I seem to remember a couple people here saying that the sample papers folks shared on the forum were helpful because their own mentors did not provide sample papers, but after some searching of the capstone threads here, i can't seem to track these down.

Does anyone remember where they were posted or have some they can post here?

[jsd]

Was able to track down this post with a sample paper

Still looking for others though

I just finished the Liberal Arts Capstone at TESC. I took it with Dr. Andrew Tomko in the August, 2013 term, and got a 100. I like research and writing so I found this course enjoyable and ended up with a paper over twice as long as required. One thing I found useful at the beginning was looking at other people's papers to get an idea of what the professor was looking for, I got Westerner's, and links to mine are at the bottom. Hopefully you will find them useful. The only thing I would change in the final version would be to eliminate some of the repetition from the introductions to the chapters.

Dr. Tomko was helpful, but this class is supposed to be your own project. If you do a good job and follow the format correctly, you will get a 100. The one thing I would do differently would be to send in drafts of the assignments before actually submitting them for grading. One reason to do this was that Dr. Tomko at least, wanted some things done differently than a strict reading of the manual and APA style would require. This ended up with me getting a 90 on the final paper, but when I changed some things and resubmitted he adjusted the grade.

Here are the two things that he wanted different than the official style:

• For print works, he wanted a page number on every in-test citation, rather than just for directly quotes like I think the APA requires.
  
• For the final paper, the manual sounds like you just combine all five chapters. He had me drop the methodology chapter, as it didn't really apply to a history paper, move the references to the end and remove the annotations.
  

Hopefully this review will be helpful to someone, please feel free to ask any questions you might have.

PDF Downloads
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Final Paper

[Mamasaphire]

Was able to track down this post with a sample paper

Thanks! That's actually an interesting paper. I'm not huge on historical dates, but the human interest part of history often intrigues me.

[jsd]

I registered this morning for June term with Caicco.

Wish me luck, I'm terrified!

[Mamasaphire]

I registered this morning for June term with Caicco.

Wish me luck, I'm terrified!

Good luck! I'm sure you'll do great!!

[Mamasaphire]

Some of these threads are older but may still be helpful to read through:

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...entor.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...essor.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...ctors.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...post145875

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...ience.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...ou-do.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...stone.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...study.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...495-a.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...c-lib.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...stone.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...topic.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...study.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...dvice.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...-post.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...-help.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...stone.html

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...lease.html

[Peter123456789]

I switched to Wiley for the May 2016 term Capstone. Currently brainstorming topics.

[kb4ns1]

I wanted to add to this discussion for the benefit of those who will be taking this course in the future. I am finishing up the March 2016 term and had Arlene Sinding as my mentor. I was really concerned originally because I couldn't find much on her other than some reviews on Rate My Professor.

All in all, I have to say that it wasn't that bad. I got the following scores for writing assignments 1-5 (in order): 90, 90, 80, 95, & 85. After busting my butt for the first two assignments and only getting 90 on each, I admittedly half-@ssed the third assignment where I earned the 80. Final paper earned me an 89. Once you add in the six 100's she gave me for all the discussion forums and the 2% added to final grade for that stupid "ETS Proficiency Profile" it brought my final grade for the course to 91, which I'll gladly take!

As far as the mentor (Ms. Sinding), she was ok. She was a little detached from the whole process (at least compared to the mentor I had in the only other TESU online course I took). She was prompt to reply to questions, but she didn't always answer thoroughly. if you asked a yes/no question, you got a yes/no answer - she wasn't going to expand on anything. It felt like no matter how much work you put in or how well you did, she was going to find something to ding you on. The flip side of that is it felt to me like you weren't going to fail with her, either, so long as you honestly tried.

My grades initially upset me after reading about how easy some other mentors were with this course, but then again, it helped me feel like I was really "earning" my grades - they weren't just being handed to me.

Here's my takeaway from the course (all my personal opinion, of course):

-It's a waste of time for most folks. If you aren't going to grad school, there's nothing useful you'll really take from this course. If you are going to grad school, it'll be quite the practice for your future thesis or dissertation. For me, it helped me realize that I don't much care to go on for my Master's!

-It's a LOT of work. A lot of researching and writing, but it can be done. You might feel accomplished after you're done. Or you'll feel like you wasted a LOT of time like I did.

-Pick a topic that interests you. It'll be a much longer and harder 12 weeks if you have to do that much research and writing on something you don't care about.

-I strongly suggest going the online route instead of guided study. Sure, the discussion forums are silly and can be a little bit of a pain, but they're easy points towards your final grade (23 of the final 100 points to be exact). For me, this was the difference between an "A" and a "B" in this course since the mentor was a little tougher at grading than many other mentors apparently are.

If I can think of anything else useful to add, I will. Also, when I get time, I'm going to try and add my assignments and final paper for others to refer to as an example. I had a real hard time finding examples other than the single other paper linked to earlier in this thread.

Hope this helps!

[jsd]

Congrats on the A and thanks for the feedback.

I start in June and I'm super nervous and dreading it. Having a hard time coming up with a topic, and I'm still not sure what type of original research is necessary as opposed to research review/synthesis, making it even harder to pick a topic.

If you end up posting your paper, or at least even your topic, I'd greatly appreciate it. Sample work is always very helpful, to give a good picture of what's expected.