JAPN403: Pre-capstone
Course description: "This course aims to develop advanced proficiency in communication through oral and written presentations to develop research project for Capstone in Japanese using appropriate media."
MLOs addressed in this course:
- MLO 4: Research & Technology
In JAPN403, our main focus was to develop the beginning portions of our Japanese Capstone project. During the first few weeks of the class, we looked at our senpai capstones and developed our own topic interests. Developing our research questions was a main focus of the class since this would be one of the driving factors of our capstone. Developing the research questions took a long time, we were constantly getting feedback on our questions to help us focus in on what we actually wanted out of our projects. Each week allowed us to build on a previous part of our capstone, and integrate the feedback that we got from classmates and our instructor. The latter part of the semester was primarily focused on developing our survey questions, literary research, and creating the beginning draft of our Capstone presentation.
In terms of completion of our MLOs, this course primarily focused on MLO 4: Research and Technology. We had multiple classes focused on teaching us about tools that would help with our literary research. For example, the CSUMB library website has multiple search databases that allow us to look for sociological and survey based researched. I learned about CiNii, which is an incredibly helpful website for looking for Japanese articles; it has been an integral part for gathering data outside of the United States. All of these resources allowed us to gather articles that were relevant to our topics, and to look at previous surveys that were related to our topics. Developing an early draft of our survey questions was also an integral part of this MLO. We learned about how we should ask survey questions, and what information we should specifically focus on to gather pertinent data on our topics. One of my difficulties with the survey, was finding a way to ask everything but keep the survey under 20 questions. We don't want to make our survey too long, but we also need to gather the most valuable and correct information.
I learned a lot from this course, especially since this is the first time I've developed a research project to this scale. In class, we were constantly advised to revise our PowerPoint, survey questions, and research questions. Our capstone primarily focuses on the differences between junk food in America and Japan. My interest in this topic first started when I studied abroad in Japan during the 2015-2016 school year. I felt as though our concepts of diet and health were drastically different from the rest of the world and because of this, I wanted to explore how university students perceived this idea as well. One of the main issues that we ran into early was deciding on an accurate definition of junk food, since there are so many cultural nuances that could affect what junk food actually is. Dieting and food supply greatly affect our end result in this capstone so there are a lot of factors that we have to take into consideration. One of my main goals for this capstone is to learn about what Japanese students consider to be unhealthy food. However, I had a tough time finding specific questions that helped me to develop this goal. During WLC 400 in the spring 2017 semester, I want to develop more focused research questions and survey questions.
MLOs addressed in this course:
- MLO 4: Research & Technology
In JAPN403, our main focus was to develop the beginning portions of our Japanese Capstone project. During the first few weeks of the class, we looked at our senpai capstones and developed our own topic interests. Developing our research questions was a main focus of the class since this would be one of the driving factors of our capstone. Developing the research questions took a long time, we were constantly getting feedback on our questions to help us focus in on what we actually wanted out of our projects. Each week allowed us to build on a previous part of our capstone, and integrate the feedback that we got from classmates and our instructor. The latter part of the semester was primarily focused on developing our survey questions, literary research, and creating the beginning draft of our Capstone presentation.
In terms of completion of our MLOs, this course primarily focused on MLO 4: Research and Technology. We had multiple classes focused on teaching us about tools that would help with our literary research. For example, the CSUMB library website has multiple search databases that allow us to look for sociological and survey based researched. I learned about CiNii, which is an incredibly helpful website for looking for Japanese articles; it has been an integral part for gathering data outside of the United States. All of these resources allowed us to gather articles that were relevant to our topics, and to look at previous surveys that were related to our topics. Developing an early draft of our survey questions was also an integral part of this MLO. We learned about how we should ask survey questions, and what information we should specifically focus on to gather pertinent data on our topics. One of my difficulties with the survey, was finding a way to ask everything but keep the survey under 20 questions. We don't want to make our survey too long, but we also need to gather the most valuable and correct information.
I learned a lot from this course, especially since this is the first time I've developed a research project to this scale. In class, we were constantly advised to revise our PowerPoint, survey questions, and research questions. Our capstone primarily focuses on the differences between junk food in America and Japan. My interest in this topic first started when I studied abroad in Japan during the 2015-2016 school year. I felt as though our concepts of diet and health were drastically different from the rest of the world and because of this, I wanted to explore how university students perceived this idea as well. One of the main issues that we ran into early was deciding on an accurate definition of junk food, since there are so many cultural nuances that could affect what junk food actually is. Dieting and food supply greatly affect our end result in this capstone so there are a lot of factors that we have to take into consideration. One of my main goals for this capstone is to learn about what Japanese students consider to be unhealthy food. However, I had a tough time finding specific questions that helped me to develop this goal. During WLC 400 in the spring 2017 semester, I want to develop more focused research questions and survey questions.
Jovon Hutchins - Capstone Presentation (Google Slides) | (PDF)