Guidelines

Presentation Format:

Handout: Each presenter should outline his/her materials in Powerpoint slides.  Please always prepare multiple copies of your Powerpoint files in case one diskette failed. (Regular 1.4MB floppy disk can easily get damaged after repeated usage.)  In addition, a presenter should print the slides for his/her audience.  When printing handout for your classmates, please choose "handout" under Powerpoint "print" window and select 4 or 6 slides in one page to save paper.  [Do not wait until the last minute to print the handout.]

Reminders: There are a few common weaknesses I observed in the past from students' presentation summarized below.

1. Lack of coordination: There is no connection between the presenters in the same group on the materials presented.  If the presentation from a team sound like they are presenting different chapters, there is a lack of coordination. (Resolution: Try to find a transition so that a presenter can smoothly pass to the next presenter.   That means the overall structural is very important.  In your planning stage, before you get into details you can highlights a few major subjects under the topics and determine how they are related to each other.)
2. List something you don't understand in your slides: Sometimes, students just copied a few items from the textbook without understanding what they really mean.  A typical phenomenon in the presentation is that the student can only read over the words on the slide without being able to elaborate it or explain it.
3. Try to cover too much materials: There is only limited time for each topic, make sure that you choose only those materials that are most relevant to present.  If you like, you can list the details in a slide and just skip it over.  The slide serves as a reference for your audience but should not take time from your presentation.  Practice in advance to determine how much materials you can present in the amount of time given.

Evaluation of Presentation and Paper

Most important criteria include relevance, evidence/reference to support arguments, number of points adopted in the subject paper,   Performance evaluation of classroom presentation, in the order of importance,  includes organization of materials, reasoning, generation of discussion, clarity, and  time management.

There following items are general guidelines for all types of assignment and should be strictly followed, examined and re-examined when working on the assignment.

• relevance: whether the material prepared is pertaining to the subject being discussed or not.
• organization: whether all materials are structured based on a clear line of thought/reasoning
• arguments: whether arguments support the structure outlined for the subject or not.
• clarity: whether the material is presented in a way that audience without significant background in the subject can understand
• evidence: whether arguments are supported by real world stories or referenced second source data. (Do not just claim, for example "Sales increases".  Instead, you might say "Sales increased 20% from the consumer product group in the last quarter of 2001 and 80% of the increase came from  the Northeastern region because of a warmer winter or a promotional campaign conducted in September to October 2001 according to the company's quarterly report.)
• critique: your opinion and conclusion to the subject based on the information collected.

• Introduction: describe the subject and its importance to support competitive advantages and how it fits into the overall course structure.
• Definition: discuss various definitions of the subject and the key words in those definition.
• Detail I: more in-depth discussion of a key factor of the subject.
• Detail II: detailed issues of another key factor of the subject.
• Detail x: detailed issues for key factor x
• Advantages and disadvantages from strategic point of view
• Cases I: Key providers and their strategies
• Cases II: Key users and how they apply it to enhance strategies.
• Conclusions: future directions and your own thoughts.

1. Do materials presented support the structure?  If not, is there a need to alter the structure?
2. What are the major benefits of adopting the technology or process?
3. Who are the major players in this field?  This includes technology providers, adopters, successful stories, and not so successful stories?
4. Can you find business practice or theories from news, magazine or academic journals to support the argument?

1. Page restriction: The quality of a paper is not judged by its size.  As a result, there is no minimum number of pages you need to have for you term paper.  However, to keep you focused, I would like to limit your paper to a 10 page maximum.  This does not include appendices where you put detailed tables and charts.  It is a good practice to move very detailed descriptions, proofs, and charts to Appendices so that the flow of your writing is not interrupted by large chunks of details in between.  This does not mean that you should put all tables and charts in the Appendix.  If they do not take too much space, it is always easier for a reader to find the table and chart near the text that refers to the table or chart.  Remember to number your tables and charts.  In addition, you should also provide a brief caption for each of them, for example, Table 6: Per Capita Income of Towns in Ulster County from 2000 Census.   When referring to a table or chart, you can then cite its number, for example, "Table 6 lists the per capita income of all towns in Ulster county, NY.  It indicates that ...".  If you decide to write the paper as a team, you are allowed to have up to 20 page limit.
   
2. Format: 1. begin with the title of your paper   2. List the name of authors and their affiliations (in your case, you are all affiliated with SUNY New Paltz) 3. an abstract which is a brief summary of your paper usually no more than 200 words.  4. a few sections of your paper similar to those described in "possible organization" of your presentation and paper mentioned earlier. 5. a reference list for external sources you cited in your paper.
   
3. For writing the term paper, it is important to have a reference list showing the sources of information quoted elsewhere.  The format can be found in any academic journals.  Tables and Charts are always helpful in presenting the materials.  (If your paper focuses more on the Furniture store project, you may have a shorter reference list as opposed to those who are writing totally based on their literature research.)
   
4. For reference in your term paper, do not rely totally on those so-called "trade papers" or "trade books".  Those are publications made by vendors or magazines that might have a vested interest in the product being discussed.  They might have a bias view.  Usually "articles" from academic journals are more independent and they usually include a reference list that helps find further information.  It is not to say that all "trade papers" are not allowed but you need to balance the weights between the two, or at least have a few journal articles.
5. To search for academic journals, you can visit http://lib.newpaltz.edu where the Proquest database is easy for you to search by topics.  We also have quite a few subscriptions to eBook and eJournal.  If you know the journal you are looking for, you can go to the eJournal link where journals are listed in alphabetical order.  You can obtain full text articles from those links.  This is by far the easiest way to conduct your research.
   
6. A term paper can either be a broad and more general coverage of the topic of interests or a more detailed investigation of a specific area of the topic.
7. A term paper should be typed in double space.
8. I will provide an example from my presentation later.