English 4320 Project
Overview
For this capstone project, you have a chance to either create a new project or revise a previous project to represent the best of your professional competency in the career direction of your choice.
Audiences and Purposes
This is not THE official capstone project of your program, but it’s called “capstone” for good reasons. Think of this project as the best work sample you would bring and show to your potential employer in an interview. Therefore, your capstone project has several different audiences:
- The intended audience of the product–For example, if it’s a brochure for the Career Services Office at GSU, then your intended audience would be students who are looking for jobs through this office. This audience will be most concerned with how well your product meets their needs.
- Your potential employer–Since this will be a project that you’ll most likely use to showcase what you’re capable of, your potential employer will be an important audience. This audience will probably most concerned about how your product helps meet the needs of their business or organization.
- Me–Yes, you can’t forget your mean professor as I’ll be grading your project. My biggest concern will be how effectively you’re using rhetorical principles in designing your project.
Project Options
You have two options:
- revise a previous project, which I strongly recommend, and
- create a new project.
So, what kind of project? First of all, think of your career goal identified in your Career Competency Profile. Your capstone project should be a project that can best help you land a job in that career direction. If your target job position is, say, “public media specialist,” you could use the website you created for a startup business when you took English 3120, Digital Writing and Publishing, or a promotional packet you did in English 3130, Business Writing. If your coveted job is editor for a small newspaper, then maybe a special edition you put together for GSU’s student newspaper would be a perfect choice. Or if your ideal job is software documentation, then an online help tutorial you previously created would be a good project. If your next step is to apply for graduate school, then a substantial research paper you wrote would be a good choice. Whatever project you choose, keep this rule of thumb in mind: it should be something you would bring to and proudly show in a job interview or something you would use as your writing sample in your graduate application.
Therefore, your project options are wide open. It can be, for example,
- a research paper that shows your knowledge or a particular rhetorical theory or principle,
- a copyediting project that showcases your editing skills,
- a brochure or pamphlet for the Career Services Office,
- a grant proposal a for a non-profit organization,
- a web site for a company,
- a promotional packet for a startup,
- a business plan,
- a recommendations report for solving the communication problems for a company, etc.
These are only suggestions. Feel free to propose anything that you think is appropriate.
Can You Use a Group Project Done in a Previous Class?
Yes, you can as long as your contribution to the project was substantial and you make clear what your contributions were.
Previous Project? Revise It
If you choose to use a previous project, carefully re-examine the project to see what revisions are needed to improve it. Consider the rhetorical context: audiences, purposes, constraints, any special considerations, etc. Identify areas in both content and format design that need improvement.
Project Components
This project contains the following components:
- Initial proposal (5%)
- The project (30%)
- CTC reflection (5%)
What to Turn in
Please name all your files “Capstone(YourLastNameYourFirstName).” You’ll be submitting the following files, which should be named like the following:
- Capstone(SmithJohn)-Proposal
- Capstone(SmithJohn)-Original
- Capstone(SmithJohn)-Revised
- Capstone(SmithJohn)-CTC Reflection