Just finished my Lib Arts Capstone at TESU

[jsh1138]

jj, that sounds cool, when i get home from work i'll send you a copy of it

[SamCes]

I would like to see your paper. I am in the middle of the capstone now.

What letter grade did you get?

Congrats! I would also like to see your paper.

[jsh1138]

Seems like it might be easier to just add it here then

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fil...7316671789

let me know if you guys have any questions or comments

[SamCes]

Seems like it might be easier to just add it here then

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fil...7316671789

let me know if you guys have any questions or comments

Excellent!!  Thanks for sharing!

[jsh1138]

my pleasure

[KawJa]

As students who have recently completed the capstone, would you say it would have been possible for you to better prepare for the capstone before it started? If so, how?  

Could you have chosen a topic and begun surveys, research, and possibly even drafting before the course officially began? Would trying that be foolish?

Thanks for sharing your final drafts! I've worked in fiction editing, so I can edit in the Chicago style all day long, but APA editing with citations and everything is hard for me, so your examples are extremely helpful!

[davewill]

You could work on research questions for possible topics and maybe do some research, but you need to be ready to modify or change your topic once the course starts. I wouldn't get into any serious writing ahead of time. Getting a document template going for APA would be a worthwhile effort.

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I guess I can go ahead and share my paper:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1otG-9P...FR110AgOKi

[jsh1138]

As students who have recently completed the capstone, would you say it would have been possible for you to better prepare for the capstone before it started? If so, how?  

Could you have chosen a topic and begun surveys, research, and possibly even drafting before the course officially began? Would trying that be foolish?

Thanks for sharing your final drafts! I've worked in fiction editing, so I can edit in the Chicago style all day long, but APA editing with citations and everything is hard for me, so your examples are extremely helpful!

well some professors want MLA or whatever, it just depends on who you get. I think it actually depends on the kind of paper it is too. 

if i had it to do over again, i would say the #1 thing I would do differently would be to pick a question before i went in, and to narrow it down more. my original draft had something like 8 sub questions, and only really 2 of them i was interested in but i felt i had to do the other 6 to get to them, and because i basically ran out of time i had to trim off 3 sub questions, including the 2 i wanted to do most. if i had it to do over again, i would construct a question with maybe 3 subs at most so i could do the paper faster and with less effort, because i spent a ton of time researching this and i really think it wasn't necessary, tbh

so find something that's narrow enough so that you don't have to kill yourself, you aren't going to change the world with a capstone paper or whatever, just fulfill the requirements and turn it in. 

getting to the issue of if you could have done the research ahead of time or not, i think you could but the adviser or professor or whoever is going to have suggestions that might change things quite a bit so i would just pick a question, research the topic and then wait on writing til they ok your question. i kept learning new things while i was researching and adding things on and i should have avoided that as much as possible

[davewill]

I came in thinking I would do one thing, but ended up in a completely different place when I discovered that the research I wanted wasn't really there. I also trimmed research questions, but not because of time, but because the research wasn't available to support those questions. I was glad had enough subquestions in process that cutting two wasn't a problem.

My professor was pretty flexible when it came to topics and did not require original research, but I've heard that other profs are not.

[nashpond]

As students who have recently completed the capstone, would you say it would have been possible for you to better prepare for the capstone before it started? If so, how?  

Could you have chosen a topic and begun surveys, research, and possibly even drafting before the course officially began? Would trying that be foolish?

Thanks for sharing your final drafts! I've worked in fiction editing, so I can edit in the Chicago style all day long, but APA editing with citations and everything is hard for me, so your examples are extremely helpful!

It is a good idea to read the e-textbook before the course starts.  It gives a step-by-step overview of the capstone process and each assignment.  It's not very long and gives you an idea of what you've just gotten yourself into.  

I would absolutely recommend thinking of several research options with their sub-questions, so you can hit the ground running.  You will have only two weeks for each section, so it is good to stay organized. The e-text also has a few examples to help you know what kinds of main questions/sub questions other students have used.  I would maybe do a little preliminary research to see what you come up with for your topics, but I would not actually start writing or doing your own research until your professor has approved your topic.  It would stink to have put in a lot of time/effort and have to scrap it.

Many, but not all, of the projects are research based.  Those will be written in APA format.  The e-text has examples and I recommend the Purdue OWL site for additional help with APA.  If your project is literary research or a creative project, I believe it gets written in MLA format.  My advice here is to pay very close attention to formatting.  My teacher has been a real stickler for making sure everyone's bibliography and citations are perfect.  It is worth spending a little extra time getting it just right.

Hope this helps!