Running head: CAPSTONE NARRATIVE 1

Capstone Narrative

Tyler Costa

California State University: Monterey Bay

IST 699: Graduate Capstone

Dr. Fisher/Dr. Lara

October 2nd, 2018

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What can happen in a year? If you would have asked me this before joining the MIST

program, I might have said something like “Oh, I finished a year of undergrad” which is

substantial, but a somewhat average thing that many people are able to do. With MIST, however,

I have completed almost an entire graduate program in one single year and am well on my way

to becoming a successful instructional designer.

When I started the MIST program, I only knew that I would be learning education theory,

curriculum design, and instructional technologies, but didn’t necessarily know what that entailed.

After taking the intro courses, IST 522 and 524 my first semester, I had a better understanding of

instructional design and what it encapsulated, including theories and methods. The second

semester of the MIST program further delved into these theories while allowing me to apply

them in creating a prototype training course for my capstone. Finally, the third semester allowed

me to work with a real-life client, one of the most valuable aspects of this program. All the

while, I was completing work on my capstone to create a training program for positive change. I

am ecstatic to finish this program with my partner and deliver a training course that will make an

impact on our campus community.

In one year, I have also attained multiple positions in this field. This past summer, I

worked at Juniper Networks as a Content Writer Intern while taking MIST summer courses. This

allowed me to segue into a fulltime position at Revel Systems, a leading point-of-sale software

company located in San Francisco, as their primary instructional designer for their corporate

training team. By the end of my first week there, I had already delivered a prototype of my first

training program, an interactive conversion of a former face-to-face PowerPoint training. The

best part about it? Though the company’s friendly, collaborative atmosphere helped in learning

the ropes, the skills I have learned in MIST played a large role in how confident I felt in such a
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short period of time. I used Articulate Storyline, a program I had minimal experience with, to

craft this training that everyone ended up loving. I can attribute my comfortability with this

program to learning Adobe Captivate in IST 526. I developed the training using principles of

andragogy, experiential learning, and constructivism, all of which were cemented in IST 520. I

integrated survey questions, checkpoint quizzes, and gamification, which were all discussed in

IST 622. To this day, I continue to use these concepts in many of my training programs.

In one year, I have gained the knowledge necessary to become a successful instructional

designer. I have learned how to utilize my skills, play to my strengths, and address my

weaknesses in every training program that I create. I am excited to see where what I have gained

from MIST takes me as I continue to apply it in my day-to-day activities.