One of the biggest challenges that students often face when undertaking a capstone project in leadership studies is deciding on a suitable topic for their research. Leadership is a broad field and students can find it difficult to narrow down their interests into a specific research question or project idea that is feasible to complete within the timeframe and scope required. It is common for students to struggle with topic selection and finding something that is interesting to them but also manageable for a capstone.
Once a topic is chosen, another significant challenge is conducting the necessary research and gathering quality sources and information to support their project. Leadership studies draw from various disciplines like psychology, sociology, business and more. Students need to explore scholarly literature and synthesize findings from across domains. This literature review process can be quite overwhelming and time-consuming. Students have to invest many hours searching databases, evaluating sources for relevance and reliability, taking notes, and organizing their findings coherently. Juggling research with other commitments is difficult.
When conducting original research like interviews, surveys or case studies, students face challenges related to participant recruitment, data collection and analysis. They must recruit enough participants within the allotted period, which is not always easy. Factors like the scope of the target population, participants’ availability and willingness to take part can impact response rates. Technical issues during data collection are also common. Analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data systematically and drawing meaningful conclusions also requires statistical and analytical skills that students may still be learning.
Students also report time management as a significant struggle when working on capstone projects in leadership studies. These projects usually span several months and involve multi-stage processes that each require substantial effort. It can be challenging for students to establish clear schedules and tasks, anticipate how long each stage may take, and avoid delays from other obligations like classes and jobs. Balancing project work with other commitments easily leads to poor time management and procrastination.
Another common challenge is writing up the capstone report and presentation to a high academic standard within the required format. Students need to adopt the appropriate writing style, structure, and meet all formatting guidelines. Sufficiently addressing all required elements like the context, literature review, methodology, findings, analysis, limitations and future work in a cohesive, well-organized fashion while remaining within word limits is challenging. Students also lack experience with scholarly writing at this level. Presenting research findings clearly and confidently is another skill that has to be developed.
For applied projects requiring collaboration with external organizations, students often struggle with site coordination and logistics. Factors like recruiting a partner site, getting necessary approvals, coordinating schedules and timelines with busy site representatives and end users, ensuring continued commitment, and navigating political and bureaucratic processes within the host organization can introduce stress and potential delays. Breakdowns in communication and unmet expectations on either side are other risks.
The multi-dimensional, independent nature of capstone projects coupled with the inherent complexities and ambiguities of leadership as a construct make them highly challenging undertakings for students. While rigorous, capstone experiences offer valuable lessons in navigating unstructured problems, self-directed learning, project management, research skill-building, communication and more – all of which are essential for future leadership roles. With guidance and perseverance, students can certainly rise above these difficulties to achieve successful outcomes.
Some of the key challenges faced by students when completing a capstone project in leadership studies involve topic selection, extensive research demands, recruitment and data collection issues, poor time management, academic writing and presentation skills, complexities of collaboration, as well as general ambiguity and independent work. Combining leadership theory with hands-on project execution pushes students well past their comfort zones, which is the intent of all capstone experiences. Navigating these difficulties helps develop capacities for lifelong self-directed learning and leadership.