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490 ObjectivesThis is the capstone course, your culminating experience of an undergraduate career and Geography major. Accordingly, my expectation for your project will be quite high. I expect nothing less than products that will win you the position when you show them to a personnel officer during an interview. You cannot obtain my endorsement otherwise. All projects are collaborative; you will be part of a team working together to solve a research problem. The faculty will provide a choice of general research topics; each student team must then refine one of these into a specific research question, under advisement from a topical faculty mentor. Project teams must consist of no fewer than three and no more than five students. Each team will meet for about one hour weekly with their topical advisor and/or myself; . Teams will mutually determine the time, day and place of their meetings to accommodate the schedules of the students and the topical faculty advisor. Except for the very first class meeting and the final presentations, we will NOT meet as a full class every Wednesday. [BACK] Once you have made your commitment to the 490 instructor by e-mail, you may NOT change to another question or team. You must make your commitment NO LATER than the end of the first class meeting on Wednesday, 27 January 2010; however, earlier is better. If you do not inform the instructor by this deadline, the 490 instructor will consider your skills and coursework before assigning you to a team. Your team shall design, execute, and report upon a substantive research work of your mutual device. Collectively your team shall produce a project report and an illustrated presentation, and individually you will provide a research journal of your personal activities. You have permanent access to more specific expectations (and scoring scales) for each of these products by using the links at the bottom of this, and also on the 490 Scores page. In the "real world" you may rarely again ever find yourself required to come up with a solo prima donna product, but it is extremely likely that you will someday (translate "soon") need to contribute to a team effort. This is how the modern workplace usually operates. I will only accept your projects by delivery through electronic media, and in formats appropriate to the "campus load" software. All word processing must be in the current campus version of MicroSoft Word; all journals and other spreadsheets in MicroSoft Excel, and all presentation files in MicroSoft PowerPoint. I will NOT accept, or even bother to view, any materials that are in inappropriate format or on tangible media (i.e., no paper or diskettes). You must submit all group work via the network (I shall set up a "dropbox" on \\GeoDept2\Classes\Geog490\2010\Team_x\ for each team), and submit personal work via e-mail. By this same procedure I shall return work to you, with scores and comments. Do NOT send large attachments (report drafts with embedded graphics, PowerPoint presentations, etc.) by e-mail as several hundred students doing this quickly jams up my e-mail quota; USE THE "DROP BOX"! Enroute to course completion I will provide (and seek from you) commentary about topics and obstacles that develop among your projects. Lives and careers are full of obstacles, and so shall yours; winners devise ways to overcome them, and so must you on a team. Some of this perhaps must sound pretty draconian. It does not have to be that way, and I hope that it will not prove so, but I insist on these course rules for reasons that will soon enough become apparent--and that I have good reason to believe are in your best interests. N. C. Heywood maintains this page, last updated 14JAN10. |