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Capstone Project & Portfolio

OMDE 670 The Distance Education Project and Portfolio

Completion of a project and a portfolio are both required for OMDE 670.

Your time investment should be approximately 2/3 on the project and 1/3 on the portfolio.

The workload for this 3 credit course, like other 3-credit MDE courses, requires a minimum of 150 hours of work.

Important tutorial for the Portfolio can be found here.

What is a Project?

Project guidelines

The Project should be derived primarily from your experiences within the
MDE program. You should reflect on the courses that you have completed,
and determine if a particular aspect of distance education has piqued your
interest, which you wish to pursue further. You may find it useful to
develop a file of ideas, so that when it is time to propose your 670
Project, you have a number of possible options to consider or - even
better - you have made up your mind on the base of convincing ideas and
plans.

The Project is intended as both a reflective and a constructive activity.
It demands that you reflect on the knowledge and experience you have thus
far gained in the field, and to then create a new product that represents
the work of a professional in the field. You might thus think of the
outcome of this effort as an "apprentice" piece whereby you have an
opportunity to create something that demonstrates your continuing
professional development.

The Project could take many forms, so you should not confine your thinking
about this assignment as simply choosing a topic and then writing a major
"term" paper. It could, for example, be designed as an action research
project, wherein you identify an issue or problem in your own setting,
conduct research on how best to address or resolve the situation, then
propose an action plan based on your findings and analysis. Or you might
propose to convert one or more classroom-based courses for use in an
online format, design a training program to assist faculty t make the
transition from face-to-face to distance teaching.

The expectation is that whatever direction you decide to pursue to satisfy
the Project requirement, it will convincingly show that you have achieved
a high level of knowledge and/or mastery in the area you select. So if,
for example, you want to further develop a topic similar to a paper
completed for a previous MDE course, the Project must be a substantive
enhancement of any prior work. It would not be acceptable to state to
faculty that your style is succinct and then submit a short paper to
satisfy the Project requirement at the end of the 15-week period.

Whatever topic and approach you have in mind must be written up in a
Project proposal, and will be subject to faculty approval before you
proceed.

What is a Portfolio?

Portfolio guidelines

Each MDE matriculate will develop a professional Portfolio to be posted by
the end of the term. The purpose of the Portfolio is to gather and organize and
present evidence of your qualifications for practice in the field, and to
demonstrate your competencies knowledge and skills in a variety of
distance education contexts. It is the expectation of faculty that the
Portfolio will result in your entry into or advancement in the field of
distance education.

The Portfolio contains both required and elective documents. The more
formal required elements are substantive assignments selected from each of
the previous MDE courses you have completed. The elective items you
include might be documents that display other activities and
accomplishments while you have been enrolled in the MDE program, whether
you are already an active distance education professional or an aspiring
one. In addition, the Portfolio will contain your Resume or Curriculum
Vita, and perhaps a photo or other appropriate graphics. The Portfolio is
a requirement for completion of the entire MDE program, and should exhibit
your best work.

Please note that the Portfolio is more than simply a compendium of past
work. It should effectively reveal a progression of increasing
professionalism in the field. In this regard, the final portion of the
Portfolio is a reflective summative statement requiring careful thought
and expression. In this important concluding piece, you should attempt to
convey how you have developed personally and professionally while an MDE
student, how the MDE curriculum has affected your evolution as a scholar
and practitioner in the field, and what are your further goals and how you
intend to pursue these objectives.

Each student is responsible for maintaining a permanent copy of the
various assignments and documents from each course that might become
exhibits in your Portfolio. You should keep copies on your own computer
and remember to keep at least one back-up copy on floppy disks.

Assessment

OMDE670 will be graded on a Pass/Fail basis.

Projects may be published internally (within the MDE program - accessible only to MDE students). Some Projects will be judged as publishable to the external community.
There may be some exceptions to this policy to protect some content or people. These decisions will be made by both teaching faculty.

Your Portfolio will be graded an a Pass/Fail basis.

Format of the Project and Portfolio

The Portfolio must be submitted as a webpage /website. We also strongly urge you to submit your final project as a web document or website. Therefore, we highly recommend that all MDE students purchase web development software (such as Dreamweaver) and learn how to adequately use it.

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