Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration
Spring 2015
Syllabus available at http://home.gwu.edu/~lfbrooks/leahweb/teaching/capstone/2015/spring2015_capstone_brooks.html
Key Dates
February 10: Capstone project plan
February 24: Presentation of plan
March 3: Draft literature review
March 17: Team efficacy survey
March 31: MPP program feedback
April 7: Draft report with summary of findings*
April 21: Final GW presentation*
May: Final report and presentation for client
* Both of these differ from the original syllabus.
Course Logistics
Phillips Hall, Room 110
Selected Tuesdays, 6:10 to 8 pm
Group meetings with instructor and research advisors
Tuesdays: 1/20, 2/10, 2/17, 3/3, 3/17, 3/24, 3/31, 4/7, 4/14
5 to 6 pm: MPA 601Z
6 to 8 pm: MPA 622 (with the exception of 3/17, when we will meet in 601F)
Group schedule
With Brooks and Baker, MPA 601Z
5 to 5:30: Rockey IV
5:30 to 6: NVRC
With Brooks and Palmer, MPA 622
6 to 6:30: Blue Team
6:30 to 7: PP Team
7 to 7:30: Rigby's Allstars
7:30 to 8: Standard Deviants
Final presentations, April 21, 6 to 9 pm
Funger 108
Contacting Us
Professor: Leah Brooks
Office hours: Tuesdays, 3 to 5 pm. Use the scheduler.
202-994-4703, lfbrooks at gwu dot edu
Contact policy: I will return emails within 24 hours on weekdays, and on the nearest weekday on weekends. If you don't hear from me within 24 hours, please assume that the email has been lost and re-contact me. If you need to see me outside of our scheduled weekly slot, please send me an email. I strongly prefer that you do not drop by.
Research Advisor: Ashley Palmer
614-551-9907, apalm04 at gmail dot com
Contact policy: Please email Ashley with the questions you have as you work on your project. She wants to hear from you, and will respond within 24 hours. Please DO NOT CALL HER unless you have already emailed about your issue, 24 hours have passed, and she has not responded to your email. Ashley will be on her honeymoon and entirely unavailable between Friday, February 27th and Monday, March 16th. She will be back on email Tuesday, March 17th and available for consultation.
Research Advisor: Ryan Baker
801-815-4135, rtbaker at gwu dot edu
Contact policy: Email is the most reliable way to get in touch with me. I will return emails within 24 hours on weekdays, and on the nearest weekday on weekends. If you don't hear from me within 24 hours, please re-contact me. You may call me anytime on Tuesdays, or if I fail to reply to your email within 24 hours.
Syllabus
Submission Instructions
Lecture Notes
- Lecture One: Class logistics, and timing handout
- Lecture Two: Research question and literature review, and working with clients
- Lecture Three: What's next and submission instructions, and Bill Adams's PowerPoint Tips, Presentation Tips, and PowerPower Presentation
Questions
- Is there a official hours/week rate to quote to clients who would like to know how much time they can expect students to contribute?
- No. You can tell clients that it should be comparable to the time spent on a three credit hour class, which might be 10 to 15 hours per week. However, while it's a good idea to stretch your abilities with this project, it's also critical to not over-promise. In that vein, unless you really think each of you has 15 hours/week for this course, you might prefer to err on the low side (things inevitably take longer than you think!).
- Can we accept reimbursements for costs?
- Yes.
- The CITI transcript prints out two sheets with scores. Which one is the relevant score?
- The score on the second page.
- Is the course review paper a joint project?
- Yes.
- Are we expecting a specific number of citations for the literature review?
- No. The literature review should be driven by your research question.
- How should the presentation be structured? And should it include a literature review?
- A standard format for a research presentation is an outline of the research question (motivating why it is interesting and what it adds to the literature), the hypotheses you are planning to test, the data you are going to use, the methods you plan to use to test the hypotheses, and the results. Clearly you will not have any results yet! Notice that there is no official “literature review” section -- but the literature is important throughout. It helps us frame your research question, it helps us motivate hypotheses, and it may inform your choice of methods. Though I do not recommend you have an explicit “literature review” section, it will not be possible to do a good job in the presentation without referring to the literature.
- Where's the handout from March 17 with reminders for the rest of the course?
- Here.