Components of Project Design

MPA Integrative CapstonePresidio Graduate School

Creative Foundation: Why and What? Burning Interests, Big Ideas: What brought you

to Presidio? What kinds of changes do you feel most strongly about making?

Purposes: What do you want to get out of the experience of doing the Capstone project? How do you hope it will leverage your next steps?

Grounding: What areas of practice or contexts of changemaking are most interesting or compelling as the ground for exploring your big ideas? At the end of the day, who or what matters the most to you to make a difference to?

Basic Components of Project Design1. Purposes2. Conceptual framework3. Actionable questions4. Approach

Adapted from Maxwell, Joseph, Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach (Sage Publications)

Interactive design process

•Methods•Activities•Product

•Questions that will be answered

•Theory•Practice•Problem/Need

•Significance•Influence

Purposes Conceptual framework

ApproachActionable Questions

Purposes What issues do you care most about? What practices and policies do you want

it to influence? What will it allow you to do next? Who would you like to benefit from the

results?

Conceptual Framework What do you think is going on with the issues,

people, settings, etc. that you plan to address in your project? (problem statement)

What theories, insights from practice, or research findings inform and guide your project?

What literature and practical experiences will you draw on for understanding the issues you are studying/addressing in your project?

Actionable Questions What specific questions will your project

address? How are these questions related to one

another?

ApproachWhat will you actually do to

address the actionable questions?What will you do to create a

“practice product”?

Relationships among the components Actionable questions have a clear relationship to

goals. Research questions arise from the conceptual

framework. Goals and questions guide what theory, research,

and insights from practice are relevant. The approach allows you to address the questions;

the questions reflect the kind of knowledge that your approach is capable of generating.

The goals will shape the approach, and the approach will constrain the goals.