Just finished my Lib Arts Capstone at TESU

[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!