For your benefit and the benefit of future capstone students, your final contributions to capstone class will consist of a Project Archive for your capstone and a Reflective Essay. The Project Archive looks forward; it is a document that shows your capstone in the best possible light for others to learn from your example. The Reflective Essay looks back; it is a candid reflection on how your project developed and what you learned from that process.

Note that the instructor may choose to showcase selected materials in posters, on the Web, or in future classes. Although we encourage you to agree to this publicity--we wouldn't single out your demo unless we thought it put you in a good light--if you don't want your project to be showcased, be sure to let us know.

(Requirements may change if campus access is limited.)

A. Publicity

The New Media program strongly recommends sharing your capstone research and project with other UMaine students and the public at large. Nevertheless you may for some technical or personal reason not want to the public to be able to see or contribute to your project. If so, speak to your instructor well before the end of the term regarding alternative means of archiving and getting feedback on your capstone. Otherwise, every capstoner is expected to complete the following assignments:

✅ Press materials

By Tuesday 25 January at classtime

In a post to the #publicity channel. (You should already have most of this from last term, but may want to update as necessary)

✅ Posters

By Thursday 7 April at classtime

Earn the badge for the Design a Poster tutorial. Then design these two posters and post your drafts to #publicity:

1) A 36x24-inch, landscape-formatted backdrop poster to display at SCIS Showcase or other live events and provide information about your capstone. Backdrops usually feature a technical diagram or storyboard to explain how the project works. (If presenting at the Student Symposium, start from the Exhibit poster CUGR template.)

If UMSS gives you a PowerPoint (.pptx) template, you can customize it by either:
  • Clicking on the file in the Google Drive and editing it as Google Slide.
  • Right-clicking to save and open in Microsoft PowerPoint on your desktop.
  • Converting it to a PDF with an online service and editing in Illustrator or Photoshop. Example: https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/ppt-to-pdf.html

⚠️ For events at the IMRC, you will need to mount your backdrop on foamcore or stiff cardboard (no tri-folds) and find an easel or support or nearby wall so it will stand up. (You cannot tape or pin anything to most IMRC walls.)

Sample backdrop posters

2) A tabloid-sized, portrait-format poster to post on campus to draw visitors to SCIS Showcase. This should include:
  • A New Media logo as Illustrator (best); blue PNG; orange PNG; and/or QR code.
  • The words "New Media capstone".
  • The date and time, including year.
  • The location (building) for your presentation, eg IMRC.
  • Your name.
  • Your URL if appropriate.

Sample tabloid posters

By Monday 11 April at 4pm

After incorporating feedback from the previous class, post your revision to #publicity and send to Printing Services. Print an extra copy of the tabloid poster to hand-deliver to Velma Figgins for posting on the wall.

C. Archive

✅ Demo movie

By Thursday 21 April 5pm (Friday 1 April for Symposium participants)

Content

Film and edit a 2- to 4-minute video to represent your project. If there is a screen-based component, include screen video captures; if there is a performance or installation component, include footage of how it is installed or how one interacts with it.
Along with the demonstration of the project, include an intro and/or conclusion about why this project excited you and some mention about the underlying technology required to make it. See How To Make a Good Screencast for more advice.
Symposium participants: The advance version you submit by the symposium deadline can be less involved than your final version for this class, and can up to 10 minutes. However, you must include the abstract number (like #606) in your video somewhere, eg in the title screen. It doesn’t need to be visible throughout the entirety of your presentation.

Format

Whether screenbased or live footage, save the results as MPEG-4. Most video editing software will export as MPEG-4 (.mp4 or .m4v); to convert from another format, you may need a conversion utility such as Miro Video Converter.
Your movie should be at a high resolution (1080p for a screencast, at least HD for live video), with a size should be somewhere in the 20-200MB range. Post this movie to the #demo-movie channel.
Drafts can be posted as a link (eg, to YouTube), but your final movie must be posted as an attachment.

Sample demos for reference

Past capstone movies

By Wednesday 27 April 5pm

Revise your movie according to the feedback received in class and post it to the same channel. Do not post it to an online service like YouTube or Vimeo.

✅ Archival drive

By Saturday 30 April at 5pm

In spring 2022, you may instead upload your folder to a Google Drive url specified by your instructor.

To pass the course you must buy an 8GB or higher USB drive and stick a label on it that has your name and year, eg Lastname CAP '22. Put all of the files necessary to reconstitute an archival presentation of your project. This need not be an exact replica of your entire project, but it should include:

1. Original files

Source code, movies, data, images, and other necessary files in their high-resolution form.
Be sure to include a pdf of the poster you created for your capstone, preferably with the editable source file (eg, Illustrator document).
You need not include any of the blog, Gantt chart, etc. that you have kept regarding the project's development. You need only represent the final form of the project.

2. Demo Movie

This must be the actual movie file (not a link to YouTube etc.) in both MPEG-4 and WebM formats.

Snailmail or otherwise get it to the instructor's mailbox:

Jon Ippolito

244 Boardman Hall

University of Maine 04469

Do not email big files to the instructor's name or just share a URL.

C. Reflection

✅ Reflective essay (pick one)

Long version by Friday 6 May at 5pm

Format

Choice 1: Website
Create one or more posts or pages to your own online portfolio or website that incorporate the text of your reflection as well as your demo movie (directly or linked from a service like YouTube or Vimeo), illustrations, and charts to represent the results of polls and other testing. Your audience is employers, grad schools, and funders who want to know more about how you approach problems. Post each entry as a separate URL to #reflective-essay
Choice 2: essay
Post to #reflective-essay as a standalone document (eg, pdf or MS Word) or as a Google Doc with a cover page listing your name, the instructor's name, the date, and the title "Reflective Essay: my capstone title."

Style

Write for someone who isn't familiar with your project but is well versed in new media in general.
Don't be vague; use concrete examples whenever possible.
Spellcheck your document, and if possible get someone to read it for grammar, usage, and the flow of your argument.

Text

Your reflection should address at least two of the following four topics. Plan to devote from 3-5 paragraphs to each topic (roughly 1000 words per topic).
1. Summarize the evolution of your capstone
Don't rehearse a predictable history that amounts to "I said I would do X and so I did X." Instead, review the turning points of your capstone's development: when you realized an idea wasn't going to work, or found a different way to do it, or had an "Aha!" moment.
Do not write it in chronological order. A more useful approach is to group your paragraphs by analytic category rather than what came first, second, and third. For example, rather than sorting your experiences in time order (such as January, February, March) you might sort them by characteristics (such as what went faster, what went slower, and what went nowhere).
Refer to images, charts, or other figures as necessary to show your project's evolution.
2. Describe your capstone's connection to new media
Explain how your project fits in the context of New Media as a discipline and field of intellectual enterprise. Pick one of the definitions discussed last term--or propose your own--and explain how your capstone exhibits or challenges contemporary criteria or methods of New Media, especially those to which you been exposed in the course of the undergraduate curriculum.
You will get a better grade on this section if you talk about technology only peripherally, and instead focus on the cultural significance of your capstone as a new media project. What do innovations like yours mean for the field of music/ politics/ community/ journalism/ whatever?
Your capstone is the crowning achievement of your undergraduate major--probably the only major project for which you can claim complete credit and responsibility. When you show it during an interview for a job/grad school/art exhibition, the person across the table may well ask, "Is this what you mean by New Media?" Your Reflective Essay can prepare you to answer this question.
3. Assess your capstone's successes and failures
Give a candid and detailed assessment of your capstone. Why were existing solutions to the problem you addressed lacking, and how did your project hope to fill that need? Now that you look back, which elements work and which don't, and why? Where would or will you take it next if given the chance?
You will not be penalized in your paper's grade if you decide that your capstone was in certain ways a failure, as long as you support your conclusion with concrete examples or outside opinions.
This section will be much stronger if you can include another measurement of success besides your own subjective opinion, such as feedback gathered during Capstone Testing from:

Other faculty

Other students

The Pool

A focus group

Actual users

Use graphs and other figures whenever possible. If you participate in a public event like the Student Symposium, you may want to ask visitors to complete an additional survey or give other feedback on your project.
4. Plot a future for your project
Is your project worth pursuing after graduation? Then describe in detail how you develop it further over the next 1-3 years. Include your original two-year budget and Gantt chart, updated as necessary. Explain any refinements you envision, such as:

Additional features or bugfixes

New venues

New audiences

Promotion beyond your original audience

Funding

Finally, explain why you would choose to continue the project, now that you're not doing it for a grade anymore. Which of these purposes might it serve?

Convince someone to hire you

Form the basis of a startup company

Build you a killer portfolio

Make the world (or your corner of it) a better place

Make your life more enjoyable or meaningful

Figures

Integrate figures into the text if you can. For those that are too big, include them at the end of your essay.
May include, for example:
Screenshots
Gantt charts
Surveys or other feedback
May be black and white or color, depending on how important you think color is communicating the concept.
Only include figures if they help support or explain the argument of your essay--not just to make the essay thicker.

Annotated bibliography

Include this as an appendix at the end of your essay, or as links in a website post.
You should be able to pull this from your preparations for last term's research.
Roughly 5-20 items.

Grade boosts for your Reflective Essay

Writing Center appointments
You will automatically get a 2 point grade increase (eg, from C+ to B) if you discuss your essay ahead of time with a peer consultant at The Writing Center, 402 Neville Hall, 581-3828.
Just attach to your essay a signed note confirming that you met with a peer tutor for at least 15 minutes.
More info...

Short version by Friday 6 May at 5pm

Format and length:

Instead of two of the four topics, you need only pick one.
You do not need to include figures or a bibliography.
Total essay length 1000-2000 words.
You can post the URL (or the text, in the case of an academic paper) in a post (click the + button in Slack) to #reflective-essay. However, you may still want to use a word processor so you can draft and revise and check grammar and spelling beforehand, since your text will still be graded on concreteness and polish as well as content.

✅ Exit interview

By Saturday 7 May 5pm (or time decided with Penny)

Schedule an interview about your life as a New Media Major (see separate email from the Director of the School of Computing and Information Science)

FAQ

How will I be graded?

In a typical year, your SCIS Showcase presentation grade will be averaged into your milestone grades.

If you choose the long essay

Your course grade will be 60% Milestone Reviews, 10% demo movie, 20% reflective essay, and 10% participation as measured by quality and quantity of Slack and oral comments.

If you choose the short essay

The essay will count half as much as the long version would: 70% Milestone Reviews, 10% demo movie, 10% reflective essay, and 10% participation as measured by quality and quantity of Slack and oral comments.

Which essay should I choose?

Website versus paper

Except in unusual circumstances, describing the problem-solving required for your capstone on your website will be more useful than writing another academic paper.

Long versus short version

All other things being equal, if your milestone reviews have been poor but you expect to write a terrific reflection, choose the long version.

What if I'm part of a team?

You can do it individually (by each of you satisfying the conditions in final deliverables separately) or together. If together, you must do the long essay, and you must write at least 3 of the 4 possible sections.