The faculty gives a letter grade on and approves both the written document and your ability to defend the thesis in an oral presentation to the committee. In the capstone seminar, as in the thesis, you will also research a topic, prepare a paper and present it with the difference that you work in a team, the paper is shorter, you get and give feedback to other students, and the time frame is fixed within one semester. The most successful teams are ones that select team members, topic, and mentor before the capstone semester starts. Successful teams work with their mentors asking for and responding to feedback several times through the semester and not just the few mandated milestones in the capstone. Broad comparisons that anyone could make after taking a few ITP courses are always less interesting than specific questions that require some in depth analysis and research.
Successful teams know more about their topic than the mentors or other students.
They find specific data to support their paper rather than repeat broad generalities. This book spells out what it means to write a research paper, how to turn topics into research questions, how to organize a paper, how to work in teams, proper writing style, how to make a graph, and developing a proper research argument. It is written for students and beginning researchers in any discipline. Everyone of you can benefit from reading this. I read it in a few evenings and learned.