Capstone Project Wiki

Held at the end of Fall and Winter semesters.

Each semester of Capstone normally concludes with a formal presentation to your project sponsors. Presentations are designed to develop your communication skills and provide your sponsor and others with important information regarding your project.

Check the schedule on Learning Suite for the date range for the sponsor presentations.

Presenting your work to others is an essential part of being a good engineer. These presentations will give you practice in preparing and presenting your Capstone work to others in a public setting.

• Introduce your design opportunity and show why it is a worthwhile challenge
• Clearly show your market requirements
• Present the selected concept and architecture
• Present the key success measures and how they relate to the market requirements
• Demonstrate that your selected concept and architecture will lead to a design that meets the project key success measures
• Show off your prototypes that demonstrate how well your concept works

After viewing your presentation, the audience should be impressed with your work and believe that your selected concept is excellent.

• Convince the audience that your development opportunity is meaningful and challenging
• Clearly present the key success measures and other development goals
• Clearly present the final design
• Demonstrate that your final design meets the key success measures and other development goals
• Show how well the market likes the design, as indicated by validation testing results

• At the end of each semester, you will make a presentation to your sponsor. The presentation can be on-campus, at the sponsor site (for local companies), or via Zoom. Please coordinate the presentation details with your sponsor and share them with your instructor and external relations manager.
• For Winter semester, we encourage you to invite your liaison to campus on the scheduled day for the final presentations so they can attend the Design Fair. Other members of the sponsor's company can come in person or attend via Zoom. Sponsors, however, are not required to attend. To allow time to make travel plans, please invite your liaison early in Winter semester.
• The sponsor will need sufficient advance notice to schedule their company participation. Therefore, we require the meeting to be scheduled at least 5 class days before the first scheduled day of presentations.
• You must ask your sponsor for a time that works well with their schedule; do not just tell them when your presentation will be.
• We anticipate that this presentation will have a larger audience than your regular sponsor meetings. Your sponsor will likely invite multiple people from the company to participate. Follow the sponsor's lead and your coach's advice about scheduling, preparing for, and giving this presentation.
• Your External Relations Manager can schedule a room for you to hold your presentation if you are presenting the morning of the Design Fair. Email Allyson or Lisa to let them know what time you need a room, how many sponsor representatives you anticipate will be attending in person, and any other needs you have. From 8-10am the morning of the Design Fair, even the Team Rooms will be scheduled by Allyson or Lisa. (You can schedule a room with Allyson or Lisa even if you are only Zooming with your sponsor and will have no representatives on campus.)
• The presentation will serve as a design review with the sponsor's audience. You should typically schedule 60 minutes for the presentation (this can be adjusted at the sponsor's request). We typically expect 20-30 minutes for a presentation and the remainder of the time for questions.
• You should practice your presentation enough that you can be smooth and polished. Do not read your presentation from note cards or other aids. TED talks are examples of good presentation skills you should use.
• It is best to have only one or two team members make the presentation, although all team members should provide supporting material and be available to answer questions.
• Your entire team should wear your team shirts and appropriate business-casual pants or skirts.