Ch. 3 “Research is creating new knowledge.” -Neil Armstrong, Astronaut

To effectively meet the goals of your capstone project, it is important that you research best practices and published resources that support your project objectives. In other words, you’ll need to embark on a discovery process to uncover what is currently being put into practice in industry that relates to your project purpose, as well as published work that helps to reinforce your project goals and objectives. As you review the past students’ capstone projects in our course, you can gain a firsthand understanding of the value that a solid literature review provides to your capstone work.

For example, if your project purpose is to develop a leadership training program for your organization, it would be critical to know what types of leadership skills are effective for organizational success and what leadership theories apply to your project objectives. In this case you would perform a thorough research process of articles, textbooks, peer reviewed published resources, etc. to gain a thorough insight and understanding of the current state of knowledge around the topic of leadership. This will help you develop your theoretical framework and provide an overview of key findings and areas of debate around, in this example, leadership. The literature review shows your reader how your work relates to and incorporates existing research and what new insights you can conclude from your research as they relate to your project objectives.

The American University in Washington, D.C. provides a Literature Review Tutorial that illustrates the importance of a literature review as it relates to your project work. You will want to be sure to click on the tabs at the top to navigate through all of the pages of the guide.

The CPS at UNH Research Guide is also a helpful resource for this portion of your work. If you need further assistance, you are encouraged to contact the CPS at UNH Librarian at gsc.library@granite.edu for direct one-on-one help. Our Librarian is an amazing resource who can help you research useful sources for your literature review.