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Webinars: Doctoral Capstone Students

Capstone Writing Clinic

In April, the Form and Style editors held an event to prepare students for the capstone writing process and help them advance in writing regardless of their current capstone writing stage. Recordings and transcripts from the 2021 Form and Style Clinic are now available. Presentation slides can be downloaded from within the recordings.

APA 7 at a Glance: Changes and Support for the Switch for Doctoral Capstone Students

In this webinar, we will provide an overview of the changes between APA 6 and APA 7, detail key dates associated with the university’s adoption of APA 7, and outline the resources available to support your learning of the new manual’s rules. 

We have a version of this webinar for all students, which applies across the university student body; students writing their doctoral capstone should access the Doctoral Capstone Students version.

APA for Doctoral Capstone Students

In this webinar, participants will learn from Writing Center Form and Style editors about the use of APA in doctoral capstones: Expectations, common errors, and resources for understanding more complex APA rules.

Transitioning From Coursework to Doctoral Capstone Writing

Writing a doctoral capstone document, such as a dissertation or a doctoral or project study, is a unique process with its own challenges. Often the shorter writing and research assignments you have done in courses do not accurately reflect what it takes to craft a book-length document that contains an original scholarly contribution, which is what your capstone will be. This webinar addresses the ways writing the doctoral capstone differs from writing for graduate courses and outlines some helpful strategies for how to approach the writing process as you move into the capstone phase.

Writing Process for Longer Research Projects

The doctoral capstone is a big document with lots of different parts, and the writing process for the doctoral capstone will last for several terms, from preproposal to final study. Longer research writing projects like that require different strategies and approaches for success—the way you approach writing an article- or book-length study will be very different from the way you may approach a course paper or shorter research paper. This webinar will address how to approach longer writing projects, how elements of good writing translate to a longer document, and what to anticipate in your writing process.

Writing a Doctoral Capstone as a Multilingual Writer: Practical Tips and Resources, Part 1

In Part 1 of this instructional interactive session followed by Q/A, doctoral capstone multilingual writers will learn practical tips and resources to write in U.S. academic English to ultimately help with capstone completion. Part 1 includes following faculty and document expectations, following the expected rhetorical structure, and using Doctoral Capstone Form and Style website resources. See also Part 2.

Writing a Doctoral Capstone as a Multilingual Writer: Practical Tips and Resources, Part 2

In Part 2 of this instructional interactive session followed by Q/A, capstone multilingual writers will learn practical tips and resources to write in U.S. academic English to ultimately help with capstone completion. Part 2 includes developing skills around scholarly voice, revising in general as well as revising for sentence-level grammar, proofreading, and additional Doctoral Capstone Form and Style website resources. See also Part 1.

Revising and Self-Editing a Doctoral Capstone

In this panel discussion, learn tips and strategies to become an efficient and effective reviser and editor of your own writing. Specifically, this webinar focuses on tips for doctoral capstone students and highlights resources and strategies specifically for editing and revising the doctoral capstone. 

Writing the Literature Review

This session will focus on writing approaches to synthesizing the research, including strategies to help organize and evaluate your sources, particularly in the literature review of doctoral capstone studies.

Literature Review Panel with the Library and Writing Center

The doctoral capstone study literature review involves both researching and writing, and the distinction between the two can be murky--often it involves both at once! Join Librarians Susan Stekel and Anne Rojas and Writing Center Editors Carey Little Brown and Meghan Irving for this panel focused on the literature review as they talk about their tips for completing this section of your study and answer to common student questions. 

Writing About Methods and Design

Your reader not only wants to understand the results of your study, but also how you achieved those results: in other words, the rationale for your design and the methodology for collecting data. Join this webinar for a discussion of common writing issues students face when discussing these elements as well as strategies for overcoming them.

Presenting Data and Describing Analysis

This webinar focuses on how best to use tables and figures to present data (as well as APA requirements for doing so), as well as discussing qualitative and quantitative data.

Introduce, Conclude, and Write the Abstract of Your Study

These sections are likely the most often read passages in your whole dissertation or doctoral study, but encapsulating your research into a direct and concise introduction, conclusion, or abstract can be easier said than done. If you are working on your proposal, how do you write an introduction for a study you aren’t even quite finished formulating? If you are finished with your final document, how do you do justice to all of your data and analysis in your final discussion and/or project? The abstract can be the trickiest of all—how do you address all of the major points of your research in a single page? This capstone webinar will offer an overview as well as some helpful suggestions for how to approach writing these essential elements of your doctoral research.

Successfully Writing Doctoral Capstone Abstracts

In this webinar we discuss the purpose of the form and style review and where it occurs in the approval process as well as outline student, committee, and editor responsibilities in finalizing manuscript drafts to prepare for ProQuest publication. The last portion of this session is Q&A with three of the Writing Center's editors.

Preparing for the Form and Style: Common Errors and Editor Q&A

In this webinar, we discuss the purpose of the form and style review and where it occurs in the approval process as well as outline student, committee, and editor responsibilities in finalizing manuscript drafts to prepare for ProQuest publication. The session also addresses some common pitfalls and provides ample time for Q&A with form and style editors.

Demonstration of Doctoral Capstone Templates

Looking for help with a doctoral capstone study template? Visit our Using the Doctoral Capstone Template Video for a 7-minute demonstration with tips and tricks on making the most of the template.