April 2019 BALS Capstone

[yumyum]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post; I want to say that I really appreciate all of the information that is shared on this forum, I've used it as a resource while pursuing my BALS at TESU.

I also want to say that I have just successfully completed the BALS capstone course and will be graduating in September!

Since I have used this site as a helpful resource, I wanted to repay the favor to anyone that has specific questions about either the BALS Capstone course, or the SOS-110 Course (which I understand will be overhauled in July). I will be happy to help anyone that is currently doing their capstone, or anyone that is looking for information before enrolling.

Thanks again for all of your help! I hope I can be of assistance.

[Mousebouncer]

Congratulations! And I’m going to take you up on your offer! Do you think it is possible to do the Cornerstone and Capstone at the same time? Do you know about any of the changes to the Cornerstone? Who was your capstone mentor? Thanks so much and congrats!

[yumyum]

Mousebouncer:

To answer your first question: Yes! That's exactly what I did. I took SOS-110 and LIB-495 at the same time.

Your second question: The current title of SOS-110 is "Living in the Information Age". The course consists of 7 modules. You will write 7 short essays, and do discussion board posts. I don't have a lot of details on the changes that will be made to the cornerstone, but it's new title will be "Critical Information Literacy". One of the assignments in the redesigned course is the construction of a LinkedIn type profile.

Your third question: My capstone mentor was Dr. Black. I would highly recommend him as a mentor. I would say that he grades fairly and gives useful feedback on what needs to be changed/addressed in your capstone submissions.

[Mousebouncer]

Thank you!! Getting geared up to start in September and I was making a list of recommended Professors. So glad to hear you did both at the same time, it puts my mind at ease. Good luck to you in all your future endeavors!

[yumyum]

Good luck to you, too! I think you will find taking the cornerstone and the capstone simultaneously to be mildly amusing. The difficulty level of the cornerstone assignments was MUCH lower than the capstone assignments. It felt very strange to switch between writing assignments for one course and then the other.

[mysonx3]

How short are the "7 short essays" and discussion posts? I don't need to do SOS-110 (I'm on the old catalog), but I DO need to do another class alongside the capstone (for Financial Aid reasons) and am thinking this might be among the easiest they offer.

[yumyum]

mysonx3,

SOS-110 is a 3 credit course, so it may help you with your financial aid situation. As for the essays: 5 of them were 500 words (less than 2 pages double spaced), and the other two (the midterm and final essays) were 700 words (less than 3 pages double spaced).

When I took the course, the students had a lot of say in what they actually wrote about. A couple of the papers were on more specific topics, but the majority of them asked students to write within a broad topic, allowing the student to choose what they actually wanted to write about within the topic.

The discussion board posts in the course I took involved writing 2-3 sentences about your opinions on some topic, and then leaving 2 responses to your classmates' posts (most students left 1-2 sentence responses).

If you're looking for a course that is not very difficult to fulfill 3 credits for financial aid reasons, and the course could somehow help you with getting your degree, I would recommend taking it.

BUT, the above information comes from my experience taking Living in the Information Age. I'm not sure how similar the new cornerstone (Critical Information Literacy) will be to the old SOS-110