The MPA Capstone Project

What is the MPA Capstone?

The MPA Capstone is a compulsory course for all 2nd Year MPA students at LSE.

It forms a key part of the second year curriculum, accounting for a fifth of the student’s assessment in the year. Conventional academic work is often highly individualistic and rather sectionalized by discipline or topic. By contrast, the Capstone is designed to ensure that LSE MPA students have an intensive and closely supervised experience of working in a group on an applied public project in a way that extends their capabilities and applies what they have learnt in the MPA core courses in a professional manner.

The project is a group effort, undertaken by a small group of students (usually 3-6 people) for a client organisation on a public policy analysis topic relevant to the client body. Team members devote around 1.5 to 2 days a week to the project over 10 weeks of LSE term, plus some vacation time. Each project is supervised by a member of MPA staff, who provides advice and monitors progress. The projects earn a collective grade and students are therefore expected to manage the division and development of work amongst themselves.

Students are individually matched to client companies in order to induce mutually beneficial relationships, and they bring impressive previous work experience to the projects. The teams are almost always multi-national and invariably multi-lingual. The MPA Capstone therefore offers clients a professional, high standard, fresh thinking consultative service, which at present is offered free of charge.
 

The Organisation of Projects

MPA Capstone organisational procedures are designed to make minimal demands on clients and to allow project teams to work effectively within the constraints on their time. There are two key occasions where project team members meet with the client organisation. These meetings allow for the projects to become feasibly scoped, given the project team members’ available time and the demands placed on them by LSE’s demanding coursework.

Click here for more information on becoming an LSE MPA Capstone partner organisation, including case studies and comments from supervisors and clients.

Further Information for Potential Clients

Working with a group of MPA students is not always easy for client organisations, since the students have to undertake their work in a time-limited period for assessment purposes and in this period client organisations and personnel often have to cope with changes of market conditions, new demands or policy developments, which clearly must be priorities for them. Hence experience shows that the best capstone projects are those that make minimal ongoing demands on the client organisation in terms of data, co-operation or staff time and that allow the project team to work in a reasonably self-contained way. Similarly it is important for the projects to be feasibly scoped, given the project team members’ available time and the other demands on them from LSE’s demanding coursework.

Hence our procedures are designed to make both minimal demands on client organisations and to allow project teams to work effectively within the constraints on their time. There are two key meetings or occasions where project team members meet with the client organisation.

October

An initial, detailed set-up meeting. The LSE students will have a full brief prior to this meeting and will use the occasion to scope the project in some depth and ensure that they are fully aware of the client organisation’s needs and expectations.

February/March

A final meeting where the capstone team will present their results or findings orally and in presentation slides, backed by a near-final draft of their report (usually no more than 10-15,000 words long). We would like to timetable this meeting for around mid February 2008. Following the presentation the project team will make any revisions arising from the discussion in their final report.

Where client organisation time and resources allow it is useful to have one mid-course correction meeting in early January. This meeting can be in person or can be a conference call and it focuses on an interim output from the team, on which the client gives feedback and advice and answers interim questions arising. The purpose is to update the client on progress and to ensure that the capstone team stays closely aligned with client needs. After this meeting the team will make any changes needed and go into final report preparation mode.

Beyond this, it is always very useful to have a single designated contact person within the client organisation who can answer questions from and route extra information to the project team and be a friendly face for team members. At the end of this project we generally ask this designated person also to give the LSE supervisor a short, 1 or 2 paragraph, written view of the project team’s work from the viewpoint of the client organisation. This judgement is an important part of the project’s formal assessment and of the final mark awarded.

We are keen to establish continuing links with a range of client organisations.  Potential clients are invited to contact the MPA Programme at the numbers or email listed below, to further discuss how to get your company involved in a Capstone project.

Email: mpapublicpolicy@lse.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7107 5195
Fax: +44 (0)20 7107 5173
 

The Annual Capstone Showcase

In early May each year the MPA hosts a Showcase event, addressed by high-profile speakers who in recent years have included Sir Michael Bichard, Sir Richard Mottram, and Sir Christopher Meyer.

The Showcase is also an opportunity for our MPA partners, friends and guests to learn about Capstone Projects from the current academic year.
Click here to find out more about these events, including press releases and of speeches.

Project Assessment

Assessment is based on a collective group mark for each component.

1) A report to the client organisation, usually in the form of a group presentation to a meeting at the client’s offices, with an accompanying PowerPoint presentation. The deadline for the presentation will be set with the client organisation but must take place by the end of Lent term. 20% of the marks are assigned by the client organisation after receipt of this presentation.

2) An underlying group project report of approximately 12-15,000 words to be submitted within one week following the end of the second (Lent Term). The report is read by external academic readers and their assessment accounts for 60% of the final grade.

In addition, there are marks for two other components, assigned by the group supervisor in consultation with the other capstone teachers:

3) 10 % for scoping and project development (including coping with difficulties); and

4) 10% for group working and self-management as a team.
 

Previous Capstone Projects

Click here to view a student discussion on a Capstone Project undertaken with the UK National Audit Office in 2008/09.

Below is a list of recent MPA Capstone projects:

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