IT Capstone is underway!
Ten women and six men from departments ranging from Computer Science to English are enrolled in this first year of our IT Capstone. Soon they will organize into four teams and figure out how to apply IT to further the good work of community partners in Holyoke and Athol. More to follow soon.
How to enroll (Enrollment is closed for the 2005/6 academic year).
We can enroll 16 students in the course for this next year. Foremost, we seek students who are eager to make the most of this opportunity, and we hope to enroll a diverse class so that everyone has something unique to contribute. You may read about the enrollment criteria and apply at the online application page.
The course will be Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:35 - 5:00, during the first semester. During the second semester, the class will meet for just one period each week, since most of the work will be independent. All those admitted to the class will be manually enrolled.
Who should take this course?
This experience is designed for students with at least some understanding of Information Technology, such as IT Minors, but all will be expected to draw upon coursework from their majors as well-English, Communication, Finance, Computer Engineering, Education, or whatever else. Most importantly, this course is for students who are eager to work in teams on real-world issues in partnership with a broader community and, in the process, develop interpersonal and intellectual capabilities in areas that are in demand by employers in all industries.
About the course.
The Information Technology Capstone is a team-taught, 6-credit, 2-semester information technology (IT) capstone course. The course will organize seniors from any major into multidisciplinary teams to address real-world community needs through IT. Juniors will be considered on a space-available basis. This is a Community Service Learning experience, engaged in partnership with members of a broader community.
The first semester will include academic activities important to the success of the projects-teambuilding, ethical and legal issues, needs assessment, project management, reflective and formal writing and presentation, community service learning, and the design process-developed by faculty with expertise in these areas. During this semester, students will form teams, research and select projects, and perform formal needs assessments with their community partners. Each team will construct a committee of approximately three members including representatives of the faculty, industry mentors, and community partners. The semester will culminate with a project plan for each team and a formal defense before their committees.
In the second semester, the teams will focus on their projects, with regular but less frequent class meetings for informal presentation and discussion among the teams. In addition to these reflective discussions, students will use formal project management techniques to track and evaluate their progress. Faculty with expertise in the academic areas covered in the first semester will occasionally facilitate reflection and discussion around an academic theme, thus integrating the project experiences with the academics of the first semester. For example, students might be asked to reflect on and discuss the relevance and impact of what they learned about ethics or privacy to their projects.
At the end of the course, teams will prepare and defend their archival-quality final report, and then participate in a "poster session" type forum for the public. Additionally, each student will submit a reflective document about their experiences with the project.
More information.
For more information, you may contact Glenn Caffery, IT Program Chair
Faculty instructors include:
- Craig Nicolson: Lead Instructor and Project Management Techniques
- Mari Castañeda Paredes: Community Service Learning and Needs Assessment
- Bob Marx: Team Building and Leadership
- Dave Toomey: Writing Proposals and Reports, Effective Presentation Strategies
- Linda Enghagen: Legal, Ethical, and Privacy issues
- Copper Giloth: Design Process, Visual Design, and Critiquing
