Final Proposal
The capstone proposal is designed to provide a map for you to complete
your project on time
and for you to receive any guidance on the state of your work early on so
you can adapt
that plan. While things often change over the course of working on a
project, consider
this proposal as a contract between you and the College. If we approve
your proposal and you
complete the work outlined there, you will be successful. If you have to
adjust your work, you
can work out a revised plan with the instructor for the capstone
course.
Here is a general outline of what we want to see in the proposal.
Introduction
This section should give a clear description of what your proposal is
about, why the problem
is intersting and worth working on, and how you are contributing to
knowledge by doing it.
This should provide a context for the rest of the proposal.
Research Problem / Objective
Clearly define your research problem or objective. Everything you do in
the proposal should
build on that. Explicitly state the problem being addressed. Are you
trying to answer a question?
Are you developing a proof of concept?
Literature review
This section should cover all the relevant existing literature. Use this
to
establish the importance of your problem and to illustrate the open space
where you
are working.
Methods
How are you going to go about solving your research problem or achieving
your objective?
Are you going to run experiments? Work with design partners? Administer
surveys? A combination
of these things?
Explain in detail how you are going to go about your project. Include
information on who
you are going to involve in your study, how you are going to recruit
participants, what
you are going to use to develop prototypes (if there are any), etc. This
section should
thoroughly explain every detail of how you're going to collect your data.
Analysis / Evaluation Strategy
This section should explain how you are going to analyze the data once
you have it.
Will there be a qualitative analysis?
If so, how will you do that? Will you have someone helping you with
coding? What type of
insights are you looking to uncover?
If you are doing a quantitative analysis, what statistical methods do you
plan to use? How
will these statistics help support solving your research problem?
Completed Work
Explain what you have done so far. If you have developed prototypes,
designs, survey instruments, etc.,
include them in this section. If you collected data, explain both the
collection process and
the data you have.
If you have run pilot tests, explain the resutls of those tests
and the revisions you have made based on them.
Proposed Work
Outline the work you still have to complete in the Spring semester. Give a
detailed outline
of your plan and include a timeline for completing the work. You
should plan for your project
to be completely finished no less than 4 weeks before the end of the
semester. You will need to
submit the final project to the committee 2 weeks before your
presentation, which will be at least 2
weeks before the end of the term so you have time to make any changes.
Justify why, when you have finished that work, you will have completed
your project.