Capstone Project

MSA Capstone Project including research project, incubator project and art portfolio project is designed for Grade 11 & 12 learners. However, learners who demonstrate the readiness for MSA Capstone Project might be allowed to take MSA Capstone Project in Grade 10 by successfully passing MSA Track Defense at the end of Grade 9.

Research Project

Academic research paths are designed to support learners in exploring in depth an academic topic, question, issue or idea of personal interest. Learners are required to design, plan and conduct a year-long investigation to address a research question.


In January 2022, MSA was authorized by the College Board to officially open and implement the AP Capstone project from the 2022-2023 school year. The Academic Division's Competition and Research Center is the course provider for the AP Capstone program. Two courses offered in the AP Capstone curriculum, AP Seminar and AP Research, will be equivalent to previously offered Academic Research Pathway courses.

 

The AP Seminar is a foundational, inquiry-based course designed to engage learners in interdisciplinary conversations that explore complex academic and real-world topics and issues by analyzing diverse perspectives. The course aims to equip students with the ability to analyze and evaluate information without error in order to develop and communicate evidence-based arguments.


AP Seminar is a prerequisite course for AP Research, which will be open to senior learners in the 2023-2024 school year.

Incubator Project

Throughout the ages, human beings have built today's brilliant civilization through their own inventions and creations. Moonshot Academy also expects learners to apply what they know and learn to try to make their own entrepreneurial projects from now on. Through entrepreneurship, they are expected to find the fields and directions they really want to succeed in.

 

We also hope that learners can promote social innovation and development through their own entrepreneurial projects so that more social problems can be better addressed from the perspective of these young people. We take the four sentences of Hengqu written by Zhang Zai of the Northern Song Dynasty as the action program of the incubator: "To ordain conscience for Heaven and Earth, to secure life and fortune for the people, to continue lost teachings for past sages, to establish peace for all future generations".

 

The incubator will offer learners' entrepreneurial teams high degrees of freedom and space. At the same time, it will help learners' entrepreneurial teams find matching industry resources, tutor resources, and learning materials. For appropriate projects, the incubator will also introduce angel investment for learners' entrepreneurial teams to help them operate and function in our society. The incubator will provide one-year guidance for learners' entrepreneurial teams. Within one year, they will produce their own products, project websites, and social media channels, and submit them to the professional evaluation team from start-ups, venture capital funds, and social innovation institutions for feedback and guidance at the time of graduation defense.

The Furrow project team

The Furrow project group hopes to break the prejudice of today's youth towards the elderly. They present a more realistic and lovely side of the elderly to the world through media platforms and offline exhibitions. In the winter of 2019, the Furrow project group held a large art exhibition in which they collected the images of the elderly from the minds of the post-00s and made art cartoons, attracting over 1,000 participants and selling out the peripherals. Their merchandises were all sold out and they gained some publicity on social media such as Wechat's moments, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu, which inspired many young people to know the elderly around them again.

The Shichahai project team

The Shichahai project team that helps upgrade the cultural landmarks in the Shichahai area will study the history, culture, and geography of Shichahai and develop them into a live-action play to attract more visitors to a more comprehensive understanding of the history and culture of the Shichahai area, rather than just a "commercial district".

The Iris project team

The Iris project team, which helps solve intergenerational communication problems, will help parents better communicate with adolescent learners through books, board games, and other creative products. By organizing a "Roast" between learners, they will build a list of common communication misconceptions between parents and children, collect questions on various dimensions, and develop a set of creative products that will allow parents to better understand each other from the perspective of adolescent learners.

The MOON Project team

The MOON project team, dedicated to giving high school students a voice and a platform to express themselves, has created a high school version of TedX and a social platform for high school students. In the past two years, they have held two presentations with over 100 participants, and organized an inter-school debate tournament for Beijing high schools in collaboration with Super Debaters, the company behind "I Can I Bibi".

The Oxygen Coffee project team

The Oxygen Coffee project team, consisting of two Q-grader barista learners, worked with Leping Social Entrepreneur Foundation and Beijing Fuping Chuangyuan Agricultural Technology Company to explore ways to improve the market environment move more farmers toward more sustainable agricultural production methods and create ecological trust in agriculture. The Oxygen Coffee team also helps women in Pu'er, Yunnan Province, master the skills of roasting coffee beans so that they can have more opportunities for development and break the vicious cycle.

The "No Trash" project team

The "No Trash" project team, which helps reduce tourism waste in the village, is helping to improve the local environment. Together with the resident social enterprise Denglong Yunhe Forest School, they are working to provide a "replicable and sustainable zero-waste tourism product design" - a zero-waste tourism experience camp - to enable other Forest School camps to be zero-waste and reduce tourism waste. Through this camp, they hope that more trips of Damba will use the zero-waste design of the experience and reduce local tourism waste on a larger scale in the future.

Arts Portfolio Project

In the study of art track, art teachers with different professional backgrounds will facilitate learners to practice art projects oriented to specific topics. Each learner will complete 4-6 independent researches on art topics, and carry out a series of artistic creations such as creative conception, investigation and recording, material experiment, technique learning, critical discussion, project cooperation, and final presentation. Through the above methods, learners will experience the challenges and rewards of being a creator, and at the same time produce a professional portfolio that can be used to apply to international art colleges in the future.

 

Art track will assist learners in personalized exploration by offering lectures, workshops, study tours, and one-to-one guidance, aiming to cultivate learners' independent creative awareness and self-learning ability. Each learner's work will be exhibited at the MSA Gallery at the end of each semester, and learners will also have the opportunity to gain access to off-campus exhibitions and activity resources.