The Meaning of a Capstone project
There are many different types of capstone projects and ways of going about them. I know some colleges, for example the LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) do a group capstone project that takes all of the students second full year attending. They create a group project proposal and all identify certain jobs for each student that dedicate strengths to each person. This allows them to grasp what its like to be in a corporate environment and participate in a group project on a big scale. These teams are required to meet with their “clients” in two separate meetings as the progress through the project. This enables the restrictions of deadlines, and requirements made by clients. At the end the groups must have a power point presentation and project report of 12,000-15,000 words.
This particular capstone project above seems to be more geared towards people wanting to go into big corporate businesses. There are different variations of capstone projects, and some other colleges like ours for example are more geared towards personal identity and creativity.
Personal experience has made capstone projects be the peak project of our college career in that we decide on a topic we desire and create a beneficial media based program that solves a problem. Although we do this on our own we are able to communicate between classmates to generate ideas and get critiques. Since ours is based off of interactive media/web design. Our end project will be an interactive media based project like a website that solves a problem, or an application that allows tools that might be unavailable at the time.
Then there are other industries as well that mold their capstone projects to fit their needs. Like fashion designed capstone projects require their students to make clothing lines. Culinary requires their students to create a restaraunt and an entire menu and build a busines plan including prices, names, etc.
It seems like all of these capstone projects are a way to allow the student to make something that uniquley shows their talents, while creating something that fits their industry. All capstone projects are important in pulling together all the tools and skills of a student and piling them together to create something magnificent to show potential businesses. Their value is infinite in a sense that the student has to feel a passion about their capstone. It must reflect who they are while showing what they want to do.
That is a really interesting concept for a capstone project that you mentioned in the beginning of your post. I have always wondered what it would be like to work with a fellow student on one of our projects, drawing on each other strengths. At the Art Institute of Phoenix, we had a project where we were essentially acted as each others’ clients. We had to create a website and business plan based on the input from our “client.” We didn’t completely work together on the project, but it different than usual in that we had specific objectives to follow that we didn’t just make up ourselves.
It will be hard to pull together all the skills we’ve learned into one website, but I think it will be an interesting challenge.
I admit I think it would be a ton of fun to do a capstone project with everyone as a group or another student. I like you definition of what a capstone is. I have mostly been looking at it as a showcase of our talents rather than a play to show who we were, I had put that more on our portfolio site. But I think that if you capstone doesn’t show who you are and what you are willing to contribute to the community, then you are not putting enough of yourself into your project.
I found some similar information about other schools using the capstone projects as assignments that take everything the student learns and applies it to one project. In one of the course descriptions I found, the final project could be a performance, artwork, etc. depending on what major you were studying.
It makes sense.