Starting capstone Monday - freaked out

[warnerks]

I was also stressed about the capstone. I just finished the course on Sunday with a 95. It is by no means as easy as high school work. It will require your time and effort. If you are a working adult, you will feel the stress more so than someone who has a lot of time on their hands. The first two weeks, you won't believe how easy the course seems. You are basically introducing yourself to your classmates and discussing your choice of topic. This is the calm before the storm. Do not be surprised, if you have your first assignment returned to you. Almost everyone in my class had their first written assignment returned. You will feel confused. You will feel like maybe you aren't cut out for this. These feelings will pass. Do not quit. I realized in the end that my professor would not accept work that was less than A work. I am grateful for this because I could see how far I came after 12 weeks. I have heard horror stories from people who had mentors that were not as gracious or willing to give second or even third chances. He gave detailed notes and even gave the class his phone number. We could call until 12:30 AM with any questions. He was truly a mentor and was genuinely interested in helping us reach our end goal, graduating. He was very clear however that we must meet the standards and that he would grade strictly by the rubric. I would not say that the online course is easier. Some people may prefer to not have discussions due in addition to the capstone itself. It did help to know that I wasn't going through the course by myself. There were other people experiencing the same things that I was. Don't panic. You don't need the book yet. After the literature review, it gets easier. I would say good luck but you've got this!!!!

Yes I really wanted to take the course with Dan Wiley but it was full, having a supporting mentor is essential. My mentor is pretty vague with his responses but his feedback on my chapter 1 was informative but I got an 80. I am working on not stressing but it is very difficult especially when I have no prior experience writing a research paper. In high school we weren't prepared for college and writing papers at all so I pretty much had to figure it out on my own but I feel like after tackling this project I will be able to get through anything. Thank you for the support, I refuse to fail and give up so I will be working my hardest and I may not have any hair after these last 8 weeks but I'm sure it will be worth it lol.

[rlw74]

Here is what I did to organize my research...
I printed out everything I found - anything I thought could be even slightly relevant. On each source I printed I attached a page that included the source information in proper APA format. Nothing is more frustrating than forgetting a page number or forgetting to obtain the year published or some small detail that you have to go back and find later. By putting it in APA format right up front that ensured I had everything I needed and saved me a lot of time later when I went to write the paper. I also wrote out anything about that book or source that would help me describe it if I used it in the literature review. Then I put those pages into a folder for the sub-question they belonged to. You could do all this in Word or in some other word processing document. I preferred to have it in front of me.

When I wrote the paper (such as the literature review). All I had to do was pull whatever quotes I wanted to use and plug them into what I was writing. I pretty much already had the literature review and the APA style reference ready to go.

I also kept a master reference list. Any time I added anything to the paper I would immediately add that source to the master list. This ensured I didn't forget a source for my final paper.

Of course its wonderful to write the perfect module and have very few changes to make to it. However, if you get a paper back and it needs corrections that is okay. It just lets you know what you need to do to fix it for the final capstone.

[davewill]

Here is what I did to organize my research...
I printed out everything I found - anything I thought could be even slightly relevant. On each source I printed I attached a page that included the source information in proper APA format. Nothing is more frustrating than forgetting a page number or forgetting to obtain the year published or some small detail that you have to go back and find later. By putting it in APA format right up front that ensured I had everything I needed and saved me a lot of time later when I went to write the paper. I also wrote out anything about that book or source that would help me describe it if I used it in the literature review. Then I put those pages into a folder for the sub-question they belonged to. You could do all this in Word or in some other word processing document. I preferred to have it in front of me.

When I wrote the paper (such as the literature review). All I had to do was pull whatever quotes I wanted to use and plug them into what I was writing. I pretty much already had the literature review and the APA style reference ready to go.

I also kept a master reference list. Any time I added anything to the paper I would immediately add that source to the master list. This ensured I didn't forget a source for my final paper.

Of course its wonderful to write the perfect module and have very few changes to make to it. However, if you get a paper back and it needs corrections that is okay. It just lets you know what you need to do to fix it for the final capstone.

I did exactly the same, except that I kept abstracts, full text PDFs when available and references in Evernote. Most of the document databases I was using would generate APA citations automatically, which I would copy and paste, both alongside the abstract/PDF, and into a references document I kept that also had links to the PDFs. I could browse my references list, then follow the link to the abstract/full text. It worked really well.

[warnerks]

Here is what I did to organize my research...
I printed out everything I found - anything I thought could be even slightly relevant. On each source I printed I attached a page that included the source information in proper APA format. Nothing is more frustrating than forgetting a page number or forgetting to obtain the year published or some small detail that you have to go back and find later. By putting it in APA format right up front that ensured I had everything I needed and saved me a lot of time later when I went to write the paper. I also wrote out anything about that book or source that would help me describe it if I used it in the literature review. Then I put those pages into a folder for the sub-question they belonged to. You could do all this in Word or in some other word processing document. I preferred to have it in front of me.

When I wrote the paper (such as the literature review). All I had to do was pull whatever quotes I wanted to use and plug them into what I was writing. I pretty much already had the literature review and the APA style reference ready to go.

I also kept a master reference list. Any time I added anything to the paper I would immediately add that source to the master list. This ensured I didn't forget a source for my final paper.

Of course its wonderful to write the perfect module and have very few changes to make to it. However, if you get a paper back and it needs corrections that is okay. It just lets you know what you need to do to fix it for the final capstone.

Ok thank you so much, that is pretty much what I did as well. I submitted my second chapter and got a "0" after having 35% on my originality report and my mentor said I have to go in a change some things to bring the percentage down. I got discouraged because this second chapter already had me stressed. How can you do a paper full of research and not have a lot of similarities? I feel so defeated already but I refuse to give up.

[rlw74]

Hmmmm... Maybe a glitch in the turnitin webpage? I had about a 10% but on every single one the material was properly referenced so it didn't matter because it wasn't plagerism since I indicated where the material came from. You aren't supposed to use too many quotes - I think 10% is the max. Are you solely using quotes? I used more paraphrases so that helps. For example.. Instead of saying Smith (2017) says "xxxxx", instead I wrote something that looked like this... In his study on xxx Smith (2017) discusses the advantages of xxxx and gives multiple examples of xxxx. This helps establish xxxx. Try switching to paraphrases and that should bring down the %.