CAPSTONE ESSAY
Philip Doty, Donald W. Drumtra, and R. E. Wyllys

Assignment Title: Capstone Essay - Professional Development Plan

Participation: Individual.

Format:

1. Outline Formal five- or six-page essay in APA final manuscript format.
1. Formal five- or six-page essay in APA final manuscript format.

Submission Method: Email to the course emailbox with the essay attached as a Microsoft Word document.

Maximum points: 20 (1 for the draft and 19 for the final essay).

Introduction: This assignment is intended as a capstone of the course. As such, it provides you the opportunity to integrate much of what you have read and written this semester into your personal, professional plan for the future.

Goals: The goals of this assignment are:

• To integrate what you have learned in this course into an essay about your plan for the future.
  
  
• To think about and document the professional goals you have and the venue(s) in which you wish to practice. While there is no assumption that you will have a particular answer to this question, or that your answer may not change later, you should nevertheless, in one paragraph, specify your current view of your future.
  
  
• To think about and document the specific information-technology opportunities and problems you will face in this venue, citing things you have learned in this course in general and the readings you have been assigned in specific--how you would seize the opportunities and how you would solve the problems.
  
  
• To think about and document how you will ensure that you develop new comprehension, skills, abilities, and other IT-related competencies to meet the opportunities and problems you identified, citing things you have learned in this course. We recognize that both your professional goals and information technology are volatile; nevertheless, you should be as specific as possible in addressing this, considering such topics as:
  
  
  
  • The formal and informal courses you might you take to keep developing your IT skills.
    
    
  • The professional organizations (and sub-organizations) to which you will belong in order to fulfill your professional goals related to IT and why.
    
    
  • The digital sources, e.g., mailing lists, Web sites, and other tools, that will be of value to you in your professional development, and how they will be of value.
    
    
• To think about and document the contributions that the class readings, experiences, and other elements of this course have made to this plan and to your growing sense of being an information professional.
  
  
• To think about and provide feedback on how this course can be improved to support the development of future students' understanding the impact of information technology on society and IT's role in, and impact on, the field of library and information science.

Tasks:

1. Write a formal, clear essay that describes and specifies a plan for your professional development that clarifies your approach to the future and addresses the above questions with the following general level of detail:
   
   
   • One paragraph addressing your goals and the venue(s) in which you wish to practice.
     
     
   • Two pages addressing the opportunities and problems of the venue(s) and how you would seize the opportunities and resolve the problems.
     
     
   • Two pages addressing how you will keep up with the changing technology.
     
     
   • One page addressing what contributions the course has made to your being an information professional and what improvements could be made in the course for future students.
   
   
2. The draft of your essay and the final essay are to be prepared as Microsoft Word documents. Email the draft, and later the final essay, to the class emailbox as an attachment to a brief forwarding message.
   Note: The draft may take the form of an annotated outline, i.e., an outline in which you go beyond the bare-bones headings, subheadings, etc., to include short comments indicating the content of various sections of the essay. For example, if something significant for your current career plans occurred during your teen years, you might want to include in your outline a subheading like "Influences during My Teens", and to insert after that subheading a sentence like "My experience as a library volunteer during the summer I was 15 helped point me toward . . ." to indicate the purpose of the subheading. It may also be a nearly complete essay. Or it may be something in-between. The more you submit, the better the feedback you will get.

Hints:

The main purpose of this "Capstone Essay" assignment, as may be gathered from the introduction, is to give all of you an opportunity to show how much you have learned and to show that you know how to integrate the course theory into your future practice. Theory without application is nice, but it does not get the job done—only good solid application and practice does. Let us look more closely at the goals:

Good integration of course work with your personal plan is essential to make this essay work well. Since the essay is limited to six pages, you must balance the two elements to be integrated and limit the scope so that sufficient depth may be presented. It would not be good to dwell too much on your personal plan at the expense of good coverage of the course material; likewise, it would not do to spend the entire essay recapping the course without showing how the material applies to your future career aspirations.

Your introductory paragraph should concentrate on your career goals for the future and the venue (country, place, environment, industry, etc.) in which you will exercise your skills. This paragraph alone would probably not mention course work unless that work was instrumental in your choice of a goal or venue. We recognize that some of you may have not decided yet, and that is fine; but in order to limit the scope of your paper, you need to select goals and venues as best you can. The paragraph should be merely a short statement serving as an introduction, but as the base for the rest of the essay it is very important.

The two pages dealing with opportunities and problems should use your specific goals and venues to focus your discussion of the various opportunities and problems that might plague you in our field. The problems area especially provides an opportunity for you to expound on the readings by the instructors and the works of Hobart, Schiffman, Nardi, O'Day, Borgman, Winograd, Flores, and other scholars you may have encountered in this course. But these scholars also show us opportunities to influence the future, and the specific impact you will have is dependent on your specific goals and venues. If you can describe how these scholars show you the way, these pages in your essay will be particularly strong. To support this section, you should make liberal use of citations.

Building on the above, the following two pages should provide you the opportunity to show how you are familiar with the dynamics—the rapidly changing nature—of the information profession. These pages allow you to take the opportunities—the ones you have selected to influence in the future—and show how current and future education (not just this course) will prepare you to wield your sword of influence. Since the field is volatile, you should show how your plan allows you to keep up during your career. Liberal use of citations is important for this section as well.

The final page provides a forum for you to show that you know what being an information professional means. It also provides the opportunity for you to focus specifically on this course and highlight its strengths and weaknesses. Different aspects of the course will be important to different students depending on their plans and venues for the future. This section also should be balanced between the views of the authors you have encountered during the course and your interpretation of the information field. When recommending improvements, your focus should be on your future goals as well as the goals you might expect future student to have. It is all right to suggest improvements in areas that do not directly apply to your future. Citations to specific course material is appropriate if it is referenced.

Here is a diagram which serves to summarize the first part of the essay schematically:

Your personal goals and venues
These form the base of the essay
(First paragraph)

What opportunities there are for you and what problems you expect to face
This builds from your base
(First section)

How you will seize the opportunities and resolve the
problems resulting from the opportunities and problems
This builds from the opportunities and problems
( First section)

How you will get the competencies to allow you to
seize the opportunities and resolve the problems
This builds from the first section
(Second section)

How you will keep your competencies current
(keep up with changing technology)
This builds from your competencies
(Second section)

How the course contributed to your skills
This builds from the competencies
(Final section)

How the course may be improved
This builds from course contributions or lack of them
(Final section)

Some brief comments on mechanics. You all have received extensive feedback on the details of meeting course and APA standards, so we need not dwell on those matters,

You do not have to be a slave to the suggested topic lengths within the essay—they are a guide to help you decide how thoroughly you should cover a topic. If it makes sense to make the first section a page and a half and the second section two and a half pages that is fine. Just do not exceed six pages total (not counting title, references, figures, and tables).

You should consider using headings to make your essay more readable. Pages 113-115 in the APA Publication Manual (APA, 2001) show various levels you can use. You should use italics rather than underlining or bold face.

Please be sure that you keep a close watch on the other standards. The same scoring sheet will be used in this area as has been used before. Look over the essays we have returned and the posted scoring sheets. If you have questions on specific formats please let us know.

Note: There appears to be a widespread impression that "formal writing" may not contain personal pronouns like "I," "me," "you," "we," and "us" and that it must make heavy use of verbs in passive voice. This impression is false. Active-voice verbs are almost always to be preferred; and, in particular, it would be ridiculously difficult and awkward for you to write about your personal plans without using first-person pronouns.

Reference:

American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.