The Capstone Paper and the Capstone Presentation are a culmination of the PL-SBA interdisciplinary competency studies and should concentrate on a central theme that implements the business processes and concepts found in the 15 competencies. The theme and research should incorporate key concepts to demonstrate a multidisciplinary understanding of topics. The scope of the Capstone Presentation should address key research findings from your Capstone Paper working familiarity with the business theory, literature, and best practices. The Capstone Paper must contain evidence of scholarly and professional analysis supported by the appropriate application of analytical methodologies. The scope and depth of the presentation must reflect the work of a higher standard and summarize key findings in your research.
Strategies and Tools: One strategy in preparing an oral presentation is to utilize tools such as MS PowerPoint™, Open Office Impress, Latex or any other program. You might want to first get familiar with the tool and follow the guide to make a perfect presentation. Creating graphs and charts, and adding images, to communicate your message in a brief text is very helpful. Organize the slides in a logically sequenced order. You can then go back and edit, add or remove slides to complete your presentation. Consider using the notes section of a slide to include your major speaking points. You do not want to simply read the text from your slides, so minimize the text in the slides that the audience will see and rely on your notes to remind you what to say for that slide. Print out the slides with notes so that you can have them with you during your presentation.
Deliverables
A Capstone Presentation of at least 10-15 slides (aligned to your 10-15-pages, or a minimum of 4000 words paper). This excludes any additional any figures, tables, illustrations, reference page, etc.
The general approach to this presentation should follow APA-format, and include reference slide(s) for your presentation.
Activity Details
Perform the following steps:
Step 1: Prepare a 10-15 slide presentation.
The detailed requirements for your Capstone Presentation should be an overview of your Capstone Project. Your presentation can take a wide range of forms but may adhere to the following considerations:
Start by knowing the purpose you want to achieve with your presentation. Without a clear goal in mind, you risk throwing around ideas and not reaching your target audience with your presentation.
Outline your presentation and putting slides in order, keep in mind that the ideas that get the most attention from the audience are at the beginning and end of your presentation.
Organize your slides starting with the basic idea that outlines your whole speech, then progress into details and give examples, finishing with a clear and logical conclusion.
Remember these rules, for the text included on your slides:
Preset in a font size no smaller than 32 Arial or 36 Times New Roman, and don’t completely fill the slide with text.
Whenever presenting any idea on a slide, always ask yourself why exactly are you putting it up there. Is it to make a point, emphasize what you are saying while the presentation is running, or to distract the audience from your words? If the answer is the latter, remove the slide or skip the information you were going to put on it.
Learn to play with the audience’s emotions and balance your presentation with a little humor, or fun factor, in the middle and at the end of your presentation.
Insert a one-slide break in the middle of your presentation- this will help your audience to refresh their senses and will re-engage those whom you lost along the way with all the factual data.
Record your oral presentation to accompany the slides for your Capstone Presentation. Speakers notes should be included with your slide presentation.
Always practice giving your presentation in front of a friend or colleague.
While the specific form of the final product can differ widely, you should build on the significant representation of your Capstone Paper with the specific application of appropriate research and analytical methods.
Step 2: Prepare the Presentation
The presentation must include a minimum of 10-15 slides in length, related to a central theme represented your Capstone Project. The scope of your presentation should incorporate key points in your research, methodology and an overview of your findings, including any relevant case study application of business theory, literature, and best practices to real-world problems and solutions.
The general approach to this presentation should follow APA-format, based on primary and/or secondary sources and, when applicable, integration of workplace activities experienced, where they may apply to your work experience or other case study examples.
This presentation, as is your Capstone Paper, should be developed and written in consultation with Faculty, and should reflect the particulars contained in your Capstone Proposal.
Step 3: Save and submit your Capstone Presentation
It is advisable to save this document using a file naming convention that includes the document name, followed by your initials, last name, and the date.
