In this module, you will write your first reflective essay about the goals you had for your master’s program as you began your program.
This week we introduce the concepts of:
- The Capstone Coffeehouse – We explain our online video conferencing system that we call the Capstone Coffeehouse.
- Office Half Hours – We explain the optional times available for you to join us online in the Capstone Coffeehouse to talk to instructors about the course and coursework.
WHAT TO DO
Make sure you do each of the following activities to successfully complete this module.
🔍 Before you write: See examples, and learn the criteria
This week you will write an essay about the goals you had for the masters program when you applied, whether or not you have made any progress on those goals, and whether or not your goals for the masters program have changed over time.
Look at some example work from semesters past: Jessica Wells, and Hyeyoung Kim
These examples As you look at the examples, please notice that each essay has:
- Descriptive Title: Not just “Goal Reflection”
- Goals: Clearly identifies goals they had for the masters program (not career, personal, or professional goals)
- Goal Progress: Clearly talks about progress on goals
- Change in Goals: Clearly states whether or not the goals changed over time (and why)
- Word Length: Is about 500 words long.
- Good Document and Web Design: There are a number of design criteria that apply to every page on your website. See your feedback notebook for details.
These same above points will be used to structure the feedback you receive in your Feedback notebook.
🔍 Find and read your goal statement from your application
Before you write, it will be helpful if you can find the goal statement you used on your original application to your master’s program. You may have this on a flash drive, saved to your computer, or embedded on a website somewhere. Wherever it is, find it! If you can’t find your original application statement, do your best to remember what your goals were.
✍️ Create (as a webpage) your Goal Reflection essay
Create a webpage on your portfolio called something informative and expressive (you’re free to use any descriptive name you’d like, but try to make it grab your audience’s attention!). Compose an essay about your goals.
- A Work in Progress – You do not have to finalize your Goal Reflection Essay now, as the goal in this course is always to get something working first and to continue to refine it based on feedback.
- Make Sure it Is a Webpage – Put a webpage on your site, do not turn in a link to a google doc, PDF, Scribd or other format.
- Put in Your Website Menu or Navbar – Make sure others can find it, but making sure it’s available through your menu or navigation system of your website.
- Know the Rubric – The key points above summarize how we evaluation your work, but your Feedback Notebook has the full list of guidelines we will use. It’s a good idea to look at them as you develop your work.
💬 Give and Receive Feedback
NOTE: The direct link to the module 4 discussion in teams is here.
- You can arrange your own zoom meeting with another student. You both can work out the details on how to meet online, and give each other feedback. The coffeehouse is an option for you to use.
- You can use our CAPPY Chatbot (an experimental AI bot) to get feedback. This is only an option for modules 4-7 currently, but we are looking to expand if there is positive interest from students to do so.
- You can use Teams as we did earlier in the semester
Regardless of the format you chose, please remember, that order to give good feedback to read (and use) the guidelines for feedback.
📅 Schedule your own meeting
You can meet with a classmate in the Capstone Coffeehouse. However, you schedule a meeting with someone else and figure out the meeting details together. The Sharetracker has email contact information for everyone in the course, feel free to reach out…
You can show your work via sharing your screen, or ask someone else to look on their browser if you give them a link in the chat. It can take as little as 5 minutes to get some productive feedback on your page.
💬 Using Cappy
To use Cappy, please do the following:
- Visit CAPPY, the Capstone Chatbot
- Login or Signup (it’s free)
- Replace XXX with the address of your page to be reviewed, and enter the one the following prompts depending on the module you are submitting:
- My module 4 essay : XXX”
- My module 5 resume : XXX”
- My module 6 showcase : XXX”
- My module 7 learning goals : XXX”
- Review the feedback the CAPPY is giving you, and consider making the revisions it suggests
- Feel free to ask it any followup questions or suggestions you would like, based upon what it is telling you
If you use CAPPY, please leave us some feedback letting us know how it did.
🎥 Using Teams
When posting your reflection, go to the correct teams channel:
Initial Post
- Make a post and address the prompts (“Designers – Discuss”) in the pinned post on the channel.
- Provide context – Type in your name and description of the post (e.g., Matthew Koehler’s website draft) to accompany your video.
- Provide a link – Give a link to the webpage you want others to review.
Leave feedback for two others
Then leave responses with feedback for two others in the same channel as follows:
- Prioritize providing feedback to those who do not have any feedback
- Watch their post
- View their webpage (click on the URL that should be posted with their video).
- In making your response, make sure to follow the prompts in the pinned post labeled “Reviewers – Discuss”
- Provide context – Type in your name and description of the post (e.g., Matthew Koehler’s response to Megan) to accompany your video.
✔️ Turn in your Work via the ShareTracker
Update the columns associated with this module in the ShareTracker to submit your work for this module. If you made revisions to some prior work, use the “revisions” column to let us know about it (also respond to comments in the Feedback Notebook directly).
You know what to do by now. The Sharetracker is linked here, and available through the menubar at the top of this website.
📅 Learn about Office Half Hours
We now provide optional times for you to meet an instructor online. Please take the time to familiarize yourself with this opportunity via our Office Half Hour Page, which can always be found under the “Communicate -> Office Half Hours” Menu.
📜 Learn about image attribution
As you build your website, you will add more and more images to your site. It’s important to understand what images you can (legally) use, and how to properly attribute those images. Please read about this on our our Image Attribution Page, which can always be found as an entry on the FAQ.
📅 Reminder - Your 1st Piece of Flair is due in Module 5
Your first piece of flair is due at the end of Module 5. You can check out the full requirements for each of our pre-approved Pieces of Flair and following the instructions.
As with your regular work, there you can give and receive feedback using one of the approved methods (your own meeting with another student, or teams). If you use Teams, use the flair #1 channel.
When you submit a piece of flair, please fill out the corresponding columns in the sharetracker which are on the far righthand side (you may have to scroll right quite a bit).
Optional: Deep Dives and Questions
☑️ Rubric for posting reflections and feedback
Whenever you give or receive feedback in this course, please pay attention to the following guidelines on what makes effective feedback and strong participation in the community
What makes for good feedback in a post, comment, video, or email?
It depends on the specific assignment, but the following generally apply:
- Focused – Pay attention to the prompts, and to the assignment that you’re discussing
- Thorough – Use a good portion of the video length allotted to you (for Teams users). Try to cover as many aspects of the assignment that you can—do not focus on only one thing. However, don’t try to cover too much, because each point you make should have some details (see next point).
- Specific – Avoid generalities like “you had a good design,” and instead be more specific, like “your headers are easy to read, clear, and helpful in breaking up text into more manageable pieces.”
- Critical – Point out what needs improving. Even if you’re looking at the best piece of work, you can give the author something to think about working towards or thinking about differently.
- Supportive – Point out what is working well. Even the earliest of drafts is the start of something good that can be highlighted as a success.
❓ What is the bonuses and bummers policy?
When you contribute Teams feedback at the end of a module, you are usually expected to provide feedback to two of your classmates.
Our Bonuses and Bummers policy describes exceptions to this expectation as follows:
- Bonus – If you’re the first person to submit your work for an assignment on Teams, you do not have to provide any feedback to anyone.
- Bonus – If you’re the second person to submit your work for an assignment on Teams, you only have to provide feedback to one person (the person who submitted first).
- Bummer – If you’re the last person to submit your work for a task or Piece of Flair, you probably won’t receive any Teams feedback from anyone.
❓ How do I attribute images?
The great thing about the Internet is that it’s really easy to find attractive pictures for your portfolio. The tricky thing about the Internet, though, is that:
- it’s not always easy to tell if you’re allowed to use the attractive pictures that you find, and
- it’s not always clear how you’re supposed to cite images that aren’t your own.
Overview Video
We’ve made a short video to give you an overview of some of the issues regarding the use of images on your website and some common solutions that work for most students.
Can I use a specific image?
Are you confused about whether or not you can use a specific image? Consult the flowchart below to help you determine what you can or can’t use: Click on the image to bring up a larger version or click here for the article that originally accompanied the flowchart.
Common Attribution Methods
We try to avoid being too prescriptive here in the Capstone Portfolio Course; as professionals, it’s critical that you learn the issues yourselves and develop your own strategies related to image attribution and intellectual property. However, the following strategies have worked well in the past:
- Attribute each image directly below the picture like Cody Bernard
- Attribute the images at the bottom of individual pages like Bethany Blackwood
- Have a sidebar that explains your attributions like Jessica Leadbetter
- Have a single page to show all image attributions from your entire portfolio like Lisa Harrison Piane, Andrew Greger or Michele Meshover
Additional Resources
There are also a few other resources that might be helpful as you find images for your portfolio:
- Creative Commons is a licensing scheme that gives everyone permission to use media as long as they give credit to the original creator. The Creative Commons website has some advice on how to best write image credits.
- Lifehacker has a helpful article that provides important advice on making sure that you’re using images legally.
- Lesson 6 of the Web Design for Professional Portfolios series has information on copyright and accessibility.
❓ Why make a Goal Reflection essay?
As you enter the last stages of your master’s degree, we think it makes sense to start with where you began. Whether that was two years or two decades ago, your path to getting to this point is valuable! Specifically, we ask you to focus on your goals in this essay. Later, we will build upon this reflection by considering what your future learning goals might be after graduation. In this Mission, however, you only need to focus on your goals and reflection.
We know that for some people, the reason you started your master’s degree still plays a role in your daily life. For others of you, your goals have changed a bit. For still others, your goals have changed drastically. As a lifelong learner, it is important to be aware of your goals and use that to ground your work. This is your chance to do that.
Also, it is important to realize that you will write three essays for this class. The first, the Goal Reflection Essay, is this “looking back” reflection upon your goals. The second will be a “looking forward” to your future goals as a learner. The final essay will ask you to reflect specifically about your learning within the master’s program. In this essay, however, you only need to focus on your goals and reflection.
You might feel it is a little difficult to know how to write this essay—where to start, how to organize your thoughts and writing, or what your page could look like. We suggest that you peruse a few previous essays (which you can find on the Module 4 page) to get some ideas. However, we intend these examples, and others, to be starting points, not ending points. Please do not let these limit your creativity!
❓ Should I turn in partial work or wait until I am done?
Most of the weekly course modules ask you do a number of concrete activities that help you build toward your final portfolio. These may include making a single webpage or posting some feedback to fellow students. We try to be very explicit with what will be getting graded in each module.
In summary, we believe it is better to get something for a assignment posted on time (like a draft of a resumé) and to improve upon it as we go than to wait for everything to be perfect. There will be time to revise and improve later.
