What does a capstone entail?

[collegechick]

What does a capstone at TESU entail?  I think I recall reading it was a 25 page thesis?  What do you have to write about?  How long does it take to complete?  Advice?  I'm not there yet, but am curious what lies ahead.

[rachel83az]

As I understand it, it depends on what your degree is in. You work with the professor to pick a topic. For a psychology degree, you might write about the psychology of owning pets. Or for a CS degree you might be able to write a program instead of an essay. I think the BSBA is more set in stone than the Liberal Arts capstone.

[collegechick]

As I understand it, it depends on what your degree is in. You work with the professor to pick a topic. For a psychology degree, you might write about the psychology of owning pets. Or for a CS degree you might be able to write a program instead of an essay. I think the BSBA is more set in stone than the Liberal Arts capstone.

I am pursing a BALS because I have so many credits from everywhere and it's the quickest.  Considering another Associates in Applied Science to help with such a fluffy BA.  Wondering if I can apply the BA capstone to both?

[rachel83az]

The associate capstone and bachelor capstones are not the same. There are three associate degrees you can get without having to do another capstone: Math, Comp. Sci, & Business Administration. 

If you've done everything at Sophia, the business administration one only requires a couple extra courses. Managerial accounting: InstantCert is supposed to be easy; it comes in as an UL credit but I don't think you can use it for your BALS. Principles of management: SDC or Davar. Introduction to Marketing: InstantCert.

CS and math are a bit more difficult to pick up with a BALS. 

Math requires calculus. Unless you already have this, you probably want to skip it.

With JUST Sophia, the following "holes" remain: 1 science course (this could be filled with biology or astronomy from onlinedegree.com if you are a US resident; you may already have fulfilled it with your BALS), 13 credits of CS. I think you should be able to use the free TEEX courses for at least some of this. 

Technically, you are allowed to get 2 associate degrees so you might want to get both the business and CS degrees but that's up to you.

[rpmranger]

Not sure about the other capstones but since you mentioned Applied Science also, the Science and Technology Capstone for a B.S. is 8 discussion post assignments + 4 written assignments (5 pages each). Those 4 written assignments are then used to combine into one final paper requirement - (20 pages). So you aren't really sitting down and writing a 20 page paper, it's broken down into 4 individual papers first. Makes it much less daunting.

Currently taking that one. It's not bad at all. I just wish it was only one month long instead of three.

[jsh1138]

It depends on the degree, as people have said. I did a BA in History and in my Capstone class there were people from several different BA degree programs. They all were similar in that you have to do a 25 page paper about your degree subject and the entire course is spent working on that. For instance like in week 4 you might have to do the bibliography or in week 6 you might have to turn in a rough draft.

Week 1 and 2 were basically for picking a subject and a thesis question. You have to have the instructor's approval on your question so you might as well get that before you get too deep into planning it out.

It took me quite awhile to do mine because I let it get away from me and it ended up being 96 pages or something like that. If you pick a narrow question and keep it simple you shouldn't have any problems with it. The course is designed so that you basically turn the paper in section by section so if there are any problems you have plenty of time to correct it and your "final" draft is basically just what you've already turned in but edited with any suggestions your professor makes. I think I re-wrote the last paragraph for mine, that was the only change from week 11 to week 12.

Just don't procrastinate because once you start falling behind it's a nightmare to catch up.

[Merlin]

The business capstone is very different than the liberal arts capstone.

The business capstone is a course on strategic management. It is taught from a textbook and includes analysis of a bunch of business case studies. It requires knowledge of finance, accounting, economics, and management. Each week has assigned chapters to read and case studies to review. You write a short (<5 page) paper as part of each case study analysis, make posts in the forum to discuss concepts from the textbook, plus complete a midterm exam that covers the textbook material.

The final project requires writing a 15-20 page original analytical report (though mine was 35 pages) which includes a recommendation based on a scenario selected from a list provided by the teacher. Each scenario represents a business problem for a real-world company that you are required to analyze and solve. The paper needs to be in APA format and include citations & references for all research.

In order to complete the report, you will need to do the following (taken from the capstone instructions):

• Research the company, organizations, industry, operating environment, and so forth, involved.
  
• Review the vision, mission, goals or objectives, and business model of your organization, and note how these relate to your scenario.
  
• Identify strategic management concepts and the internal and external environment, including international aspects of the organization important to your scenario.
  
• List the alternative competitive strategies that could be taken to address the scenario.
  
• Identify ethical principles and socially responsible management values that are relevant to your scenario.
  
• Explain the key elements necessary to execute your recommended strategic plan.
  

The BSBA capstone is a bit of a beast, especially in the first few weeks as you get used to the workload. This is why I don't recommend people try to take it at the same time as any other course. But as long as you don't allow yourself to fall behind it is manageable. In my cohort, we had 2-3 people drop out in the first few weeks because they were either not ready or couldn't keep up with the workload.

[AZDan]

Great insight Merlin. How many hours per week do you estimate you spent on the capstone project?
I just completed an intensive writing course through ASU and I estimate I spent about 18 hours a week for the 8 weeks.

[Merlin]

Great insight Merlin. How many hours per week do you estimate you spent on the capstone project?
I just completed an intensive writing course through ASU and I estimate I spent about 18 hours a week for the 8 weeks.

Since I was in a November capstone and wanted to make sure I was free for the holidays, I made sure to work pretty far ahead. I had already finished reading the first half of the textbook (and took copious notes) before the class started. I also started working on my final project right after I completed the midterm to be sure I wouldn't end up trying to squeeze it all in at the end. Because of that, I was able to take a more leisurely pace moving through the final project.

It's been a while since I took that course, but I want to say I spent about a week or so doing some preliminary research on all the company scenarios to figure out which one I wanted to focus on. Once I figured it out, I spent two weeks of research and analysis for the specific company and industry and another week writing and revising. I write pretty quickly once I know what to write. The research and analysis piece was by far the lion's share of the work. I usually spend somewhere between 2-6 hours per day on my studies depending on the day, so I probably spent 20-25 hours a week on average. But that varied depending on where it fell during the holidays... I took several days off around each holiday plus we had to drive to another state to meet up with family and such, so I worked out of hotel rooms for part of it as well.

Had I not have been so far ahead it could have been very messy. As it was, I was able to be pretty casual about the whole thing and still managed to submit my report 3 weeks ahead of the deadline for submission.

[Muldoon]

I just took the BSBA Capstone earlier this year, and I spent about 20-25 hours per week on it as well. There was some variance from week to week, but the average weekly workload would be assigned readings, two forum posts (one original post that you write in response to the question posted, and two responses to your classmate's posts), and then a case study assignment every other week, at generally 5-7 pages each. Then there was a midterm, a profile test, and the final paper, mine was 20 pages long.

It was manageable at that pace, even while working full-time. I spent nights and weekends working on the class. With the exception of one weekend spent working on Microeconomics, it was the only class I took at the time. I would not suggest taking another class at the same time unless you are a full-time student.