Capstone Project Guidelines and Specifications – Arts in Educational Technology Program
Two components: 1) Educational Technology Product, and 2) Paper
Educational Technology Product
• A tangible product of significant scope (to be negotiated by you and your advisor) that you design and develop
• Examples include:
Documentation for a redesigned class unit that will now incorporate innovative teaching strategies employing one or more educational technology tools
A manual and/or other materials for a professional development workshop that will teach your colleagues how to use some educational technology
A set of online video tutorials (likely housed on a website) that teach some complex concepts and/or skills
• Your product must clearly reflect and apply theories and content you learned during your Masters degree coursework
Paper
1. Introduction
Problem Statement
• Clearly explain what problem or set of problems you are trying to address. This can be a learning or performance gap or opportunity for improvement. It can be the need to better align with some set of standards. It can be a class or course design that is not achieving satisfactory results.
Context
• Clearly describe the conditions in which this project will take place. What is the organization or company or school, etc.? Where is located and what are its purposes? Are there relevant recent organizational changes that will affect this project? Where in the curriculum (if relevant) would this project come into play?
Target Audience
• Who are the learners or workers others targeted by this intervention? What are key, relevant characteristics and traits that will affect the design of this intervention? (i.e. skill level, special needs, age, vocation)
Goals/Objectives
• What is this project intended to accomplish? How will it address the problem statement articulated above? These should be tangible, measureable and observable.
2. Literature Review
In this section, you will use journal and magazine articles, book chapters, and other relevant, academically sound sources to both justify the soundness of your approach to accomplishing your goals/objectives and to provide justification for particular design decisions you make in the design of your product. This will be a substantial section of your paper. You must use APA style to correctly cite your sources and be sure there is an APA style bibliography at the end of your paper
3. Needs Analysis *(see bottom of page)
You will use research methods (quantitative and/or qualitative) to learn about the performance or learning needs of your target audience. Identifying these needs will then help to guide your design.
Methods you may use to conduct your Needs Analysis include, but are not limited to:
• Pre-test
• Survey
• Interviews
• Focus group
For your paper, you must document the following:
• Describe the method(s) you are using to conduct your Needs Analysis and explain why you chose this (these) method(s)
• Include any data collection instruments you create as Appendices at the back of your paper
• Summarize your data. Tables are good ways to summarize quantitative data. Significant representative samples would be appropriate to include for qualitative data
• Analyze your data and summarize your analysis. Analysis methods should be appropriate for the purposes of your design.
• Summarize your findings from your analysis
• Discuss your findings and how you interpret them. Consider how they will affect your design
4. Design Decision Documentation
In this section, you will describe and explain some of the key design decisions you made for your project. These decisions may have been based your literature review, your needs analysis (if you conducted one), your professional experience or an informed hunch. You may choose to include some screenshots of your project to more clearly demonstrate some of your design decisions.
5. Usability Test *(see bottom of page)
You will use research methods (quantitative and/or qualitative) to try out and test what you have created. Think of this is a beta-test. What you learn from your Usability Test would normally guide revisions of your product (you do not need to actually make revisions for this project – that is beyond the scope of your Capstone Project)
Methods you may use to conduct your Needs Analysis include, but are not limited to:
• Pre-test/Post-test
• Survey (perhaps pre/post)
• Interviews
• Focus group
For your paper, you must document the following:
• Describe the method(s) you are using to conduct your Usability Test and explain why you chose this (these) method(s)
• Include any data collection instruments you create as Appendices at the back of your paper
• Summarize your data. Tables are good ways to summarize quantitative data. Significant representative samples would be appropriate to include for qualitative data
• Analyze your data and summarize your analysis. Analysis methods should be appropriate for the purposes of your design.
• Summarize your findings from your analysis
• Discuss your findings and how you interpret them. Consider how they would affect revisions that you may consider making to your product
6. Conclusion/Reflection
In this final section, you will reflect on and summarize the major lessons you learned from conducting and completing this project. You may focus on the object of your project and/or on your process. You may consider what you might do differently on a future project or what went well that you would do the same.
* You may choose to conduct a Needs Analysis OR a Usability Test. You need not conduct both
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