Week 3 - Assignment Background and Approach

Milestone
Please refer to the Capstone Components Section for a detailed review of these sections of your capstone.

When writing the Capstone, it is important to keep the purpose in mind. The Capstone should present your approach to solving a unique problem, utilizing and showcasing the knowledge and skills you have developed across your degree program. To accomplish this goal, you need to remain focused on your problem statement. You need to analyze and synthesize the work of others to create an argument and foundation for your solution.
To begin, you need to state the problem and communicate the Background of the problem. Stating the problem will serve as the foundation, framework, or basis for the remaining sections of the capstone. Those sections include the literature review, approach, solution, discussion, recommendations, and conclusion.

For an overview of the Background section, please consider the following clip. In particular, note the presenter's generalization of the Chapter 1/Introduction/Background section to all academic papers. The background is a fundamental element of any scholarly work.

Background: In this introduction to the project; define the question and problem to be solved. The background should include a thesis statement. The thesis statement is the focus of the entire project. Your thesis statement connects all your points in your Capstone and provides context for the problem. Use the work from the proposal to introduce the topic and shape the project definition. This section may include some background, but it should only be enough to give the project some context.

Approach: Describe the process you will take to solve the problem. What questions do you need to ask? What do you need to learn? This section does need not be lengthy, about 250 words, but gives the reader a clear idea of the steps you’ll take to get your results (i.e., your analysis, case study, etc.). Be sure that your approach is within the scope of this project. Do not predict or include your resulting solution in this section. One thing the approach is not is a description of the types of sources you used (i.e. selected peer-reviewed articles) or where you found them (i.e. consulted the DU Library). You can describe your search methodology.

Week 3 - Assignment Background and Approach Milestone Please re...