capstone FINAL week

Post ID: 3524493

Discussion: For this final week, please share your thoughts on:

Your Capstone experience. How has the learning process been for you, and what were the big challenges that you overcame?
Your MBA Program. How has your MBA Program culminated in this Capstone?

Assignment 1:

Submissions

In this assignment area, you are asked to submit (upload) two files:

Final Project Narrative – This is “the” report and is based on the MBA Capstone Project Description document that you have been using throughout the course. Formatting:
- Page length – No required length, but generally about twenty-five pages, double-spaced.
- Format – APA overall (citations, etc.), but first person is permissible.
- Outline – Begin with the Outline completed in the first week of class, and rework as needed to fit your specific project. All Areas of Management Practice must be clearly explained and identifiable.
Final Economic Model – This update to the Draft completed in Week Four must be submitted separately, even if copied or summarized in the Narrative Document. Please reference the assignment, “Draft Economic Model,” for details. The final model should clearly quantify the incremental benefits and costs, leading to the project's incremental value overall.

Assignment 2: Note: Before completing this assignment, please read Chapter 15, Reflect on Your Experience in the textbook, Doing by Learning.

Overview

This assignment differs significantly from any final assessment or summary that may have been included in your Final Narrative. Instead, this assignment asks you to reflect on your Learning and Growth, the MBA Capstone, and the MBA Program overall.

Assignment

Before completing this assignment, it is highly recommended that you review this week’s reading (Chapter 15, Reflect on Your Experience, in Doing by Learning). For this assignment, you can choose from the two options below:

Option 1: In no less than two pages, answer the following three broad questions.

For specific topics, you may refer to either this week’s reading or any of the questions posed in Option 2 of this assignment.

Your personal learning and growth as a learner and professional
The MBA Capstone as a learning experience
The MBA Program, overall as an integrated learning experience

Option 2: In no less than two pages, answer the following set of questions directly.

Capstone: Leadership – How did your leadership skills evolve over the course of the project? Can you describe any moments when you felt a heightened sense of confidence about yourself as a leader of directing a major inquiry?
Capstone: Areas of Management Practice – Your MBA covered a wide range of topics that are appropriate to the successful management of any organization. In this Capstone, you were asked to reach back and link many concepts within your courses through the Areas of Management Practice model. Can you describe how this process of rediscovery (looking back on your courses and previous learning) worked as you built out your project? Do you now feel any differently about your MBA Program than you did before completing your Capstone?
Capstone: Network – Early in the project, you were encouraged to build a network of colleagues and others for support and advice. The premise is that when engaged in a work-based project, learning is a collaborative effort. Reflect on the process of networking and your involvement with others in this project. How did relationships both within and external to the organization contribute to your success?
Capstone: Project Management – Your Capstone undoubtedly had many moving parts to manage. While you were not required to build an actual project management plan, you were asked about how you would be planning your time. How would you assess your project management successes and challenges associated with your Capstone? How is this experience likely to impact how you approach large, multifaceted projects in the future?
Capstone: Emotional Learning – A large, self-directed project needing to be completed in such a short time frame can be a deeply emotional experience. This can be especially true for a project serving as the one remaining requirement between you and your MBA, in which you have invested much. What emotions do you remember feeling at various points in the project? In retrospect, are you satisfied with how you managed those emotions? Can you identify how you have grown through this experience that will positively impact your future work?
Capstone: Professional Self-Confidence – One of the greatest outcomes that students have reported after completing the MBA Capstone is greater self-confidence as a professional. This self-efficacy comes from managing such a complex project to the finish line in such a short time period. How has your overall self-confidence as a professional changed during these eight weeks?
Capstone: Inquiry-Based Learning – As you know, the MBA Capstone is very dependent on your doing primary research by interacting with others associated with your project or entrepreneurial venture. Hopefully, you found yourself developing skills in inquiry-based learning through interviews, team discussions, and dialogue. Assuming that to be the case, how did your competence in using inquiry to learn from others develop over the course of the project? If it wasn’t the case for you, then can you reflect on why?
Capstone: Experiential Learning Cycle – As you engaged in the process of researching, reflecting/observing, developing tentative conclusions, testing your thinking, obtaining new data, interacting with others, and revising your conclusions, you were really following a cycle of experiential learning. You may remember from your reading that Kolb’s model (Doing by Learning text, p. 30) contains four stages of the learning cycle: Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualization, and Active Experimentation. Experiential learning describes well the typical process for learning with others in the workplace. You probably found some parts of this process easier than others. You may, for example, really enjoy collecting data and reflecting on it, but struggle to come to conclusions. Alternatively, you may be less patient with the reflective and more abstract work of developing conclusions, but anxious to test out your conclusions quickly.
1. How did this learning process work for you as you completed your Capstone? Were some parts of this learning cycle easier for you than others?
2. Did you adapt to use less comfortable parts of the learning cycle so they became easier over time? Do you now feel more comfortable with the process overall?
3. How will this impact you as an experiential learner in the future?
Capstone: Grit, Persistence, and Passion – The Capstone represents a major effort and a very different method of learning from all of your previous MBA courses. For most students, there are notable moments of stress when you needed to dig deep, persist, and depend on what is referred to as “grit” to push yourself. How did you get through those moments? Were there moments during the project when you lost faith in its value or your work, and how did you manage that? How did your passion for the project or entrepreneurial idea support you through stressful times?
Capstone: Ethical Choices and Decisions – Organizational life is filled with decision points and choices that are guided by values, as well as other decision criteria. As you moved through your research and developing your project, how did values (personal, organizational, or other) guide your work? Based on Gill’s work (Ethical Audits in Doing by Learning, pp. 50-51), how would you assess the ethical environment of your organization? If your project is entrepreneurial, then, looking forward, how do you see building a culture of ethical excellence?
MBA: Career Advancement and Mobility – An MBA is often completed for both career advancement and the inherent career flexibility that it affords. How has completing this MBA affected your personal career ambitions? How did your career ambitions or perspectives on your future change over the course of the program?