THE USE OF POSTER PRESENTATIONS AS A FINAL PROJECT IN THE BUSINESS POLICY COURSE Developments In Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 19, 1992 17 THE USE OF POSTER PRESENTATIONS AS A FINAL PROJECT IN THE BUSINESS POLICY COURSE William D. Biggs, Beaver College ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of posters as a final student project in the business policy course. To provide the reader with background the paper first presents some general information about the business policy course. Second the use of posters in other fields is discussed. Third, the business policy course in which the posters have been used is described. Fourth, specific information regarding the posters is presented along with the institutional context, which supports this type of activity. Finally, some of the experiences with the posters, including benefits and problems are offered. BACKGROUND ABOUT THE BUSINESS POLICY COURSE In 1959 two major reports (Gordon and Howell, 1959; and Pierson, 1959) were published which changed the nature of business programs throughout the United States. Among the changes suggested in the reports colleges and universities were called upon to develop a capstone course for business majors. Most business schools responded to this call by developing a course in business policy whose primary purpose was to have students look at the total organization and integrate the various functional areas of the business. In most instances schools adopted the case method as the pedagogy for this course since cases had been used for a number of years to teach various aspects of business (McNair and Hersum, 1954). Beginning in the 1960’s, however, another pedagogy, the business game, become available to serve the capstone course. While the relative merits of the case and simulation pedagogy remains a matter of some debate it appears that today both pedagogy are used quite frequently. More information about computerized business games can be found in the Guide to Business Gaming and Experiential Leaning (Gentry, 1990) which contains article dealing with many aspects of experiential learning including the use of business games (Faria, 1990) and their history and teaching efficacy (Wolfe, 1990). POSTER PRESENTATIONS IN GENERAL Concurrent with but unrelated to the rise of business games a number of disciplines, particularly the physical sciences, began to use a poster presentation format at professional meetings. With this approach a researcher/author prepares a poster containing verbiage and graphical information about the nature of the research. Typically, the researcher develops an abstract which people can pick up as they stop by the poster. If an individual is interested In the topic an! wants more information the researcher is available to discuss the work. From discussions with colleagues it appears that the approach was first used by the physical sciences and that they may have developed the idea based upon student science fairs. Other disciplines, most notably psychology, followed suit and posters became an acceptable, and in some groups, a preferred method of presentation at professional meetings. It appears that these professional groups saw at least three distinct advantages to this method of presentation as opposed to the method of having an individual “read his/her paper to a group as part of a paper session. First, it let people identify topics in which they were interested and then talk directly to the author about the methodology employed results, etc. Second, it meant that researchers were talking only with people who were directly interested in what they had done. Third poster presentations were more efficient since you no longer had a room of people listening to three papers when they each had come to hear only one. Finally, it provided an opportunity to have more “presentations” on the program. THE AUTHOR’S BUSINESS POLICY COURSE The author uses both cases and a business simulation in the business policy course. The cases used are similar to those available through the Harvard Case Clearinghouse or published in case books such as Byars (1987); Certo and Peters (1991); Pearce and Robinson (1991); and Thompson and Strickland (1990). The simulation used is Micromatic: A Management Simulation (Scott and Strickland, 1985). This simulation is moderately complex and well balanced across the business functional areas (Gomolka, Ward, and Parrot 1982). It requires students to make about 50 decisions per decision period each of which represents a quarter of a year of business operation. During the semester students make 12 set of decisions which simulates three years of running the company. The students make the decisions as part of a team. At the beginning of the semester the students are permitted to create their own three- person teams. Four-person teams are permitted if the number of students in the class is not divisible by three. The students as part of their team work together on their decisions, reports, and presentations. Prior to making their first set of decisions the students prepare a strategy report in which they set forth their basic philosophy, mission, goals, objectives and plans. After each simulated year the students prepare a management report which describes what they set out to accomplish, what happened (including their analysis of the environment), and what they plan to do in the future. These reports are reviewed by the instructor and by each firm’s “board of directors” which is comprised of faculty and business executives. To provide a basis for comparison each board member serves on two boards. The students also are required to make a presentation to their board of directors after each simulated year. For the first two of these meetings the students make a formal presentation after which the board members ask them questions. For the final meeting the students are required to prepare a poster showing what they set out to accomplish, successes and failures they experienced, and future directions. THE AUTHOR’S USE OF POSTER PRESENTATIONS Before discussing the poster presentations as they are used in the business policy course it may be useful to provide some institutional context. For Developments In Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 19, 1992 18 more than ten years the college’s fine arts department has held a senior art thesis each spring. At the thesis the seniors present their work and are available to discuss it. In essence each student has a “showing’ of his/her work just as professionals in the field do. About seven years ago, a number of individuals at the college, noting the success of the art thesis presentations, proposed that the seniors in each department do a senior project which would involve some public presentation of their work. The first department to adopt this suggestion was the biology department, which used the poster presentation model from its professional meetings as the way for their seniors to present their research. The next department to introduce the senior project along with a poster presentation was psychology. Again, this discipline was drawing upon a presentation format, which was widely accepted among those in the profession. In the case of both biology arid psychology the students have an abstract of their work to hand out and they are available to discuss their research. Over the years these departments have turned the senior project presentations into an event which attracts members of the entire college community (students, faculty, administrators, and staff), friends, alumni, spouses, children, parents, employers, and others from the community at large. More recently the physical therapy department, which offers the master’s degree only, and the business administration and economics department have begun to follow practices similar to art, biology and psychology. Other departments are also now adding this type of public presentation to their programs so they are becoming a college-wide event. The extent of the adoption is shown by the fact that last year the fine arts department under the direction of the associate dean of the college conducted a workshop on poster preparation for all seniors. As part of this workshop the department distributed a resource booklet assembled to help non-art majors with their poster presentations. In the business administration area we decided that the business policy course constituted a senior project since it requires students to pull together all their areas of study. We decided that this course also offered the opportunity tot students to do public presentations involving posters since they could summarize their performance in the simulation. The poster presentations take place as part of the last meeting with the board of directors. The students meet with their board for about 10 minutes then the board members visit with other teams so they have an opportunity to see how all the teams performed. After about 30 minutes the doors to the room are opened and anyone is free to attend and talk to the students, the instructor, and the board members. The students’ posters set forth what they set out to accomplish, successes and failures, arid future directions. Typically, they include some verbiage as well as graphic presentation of material. The Instructor also prepares a poster, which describes the nature of the environment the students were facing over the three years of simulated operations. A photocopy of one of the posters developed by a team of students is presented as the last page of this article. This photocopy indicates the type of information the students typically include. The layout of this information in the photocopy has been modified from the original poster, which was 28 inches by 44 inches in order to have it fit on an 8 and 1/2 inch by 11-inch page unfortunately, a photocopy of this type losses the richness of the materials, graphics, colors, and artistic creativity employed by the students. To try to capture some of these aspects we have had the art department make color slides to preserve the students work in a better fashion. EXPERIENCES WITH THE POSTER PRESENTATIONS We have now used the poster presentation approach for three years. We have had some good results and some not so good. We have learned some things, which work and some things which need to be better managed. On balance, however, the poster presentations have been valuable in a variety of ways. First, they have brought recognition to the students and the department from many outside the department. The president of the college, chief administrative officers, department chairs, faculty, arid students from many disciplines, business executives, as well as, friends, spouses, children, and parents of the students have attended the presentations. Second, they have forced the students to focus on what information they need to provide the two very diverse audiences who will vied the posters. As can be seen from the above list the people stopping by will range from corporate presidents who have participated on the boards to individuals who are relatively naive about business operations. Third, they have helped students who will be taking the course in the future gain information about the course requirements and expectations prior to taking the course. Fourth, they have fostered inter-departmental cooperation among the students of the college. Thus, in the must recent year some of the teams hired students from the art department to help them with the artistic aspects of their posters. In light of these developments we hope to have more formal connections between the departments in the future. Finally, the poster presentations have given the student experience in what they may be called upon to do in the “real world as they do presentations. They clearly have begun to explore on their own the use or Harvard Graphics and other software to aid them in their presentations Not all has gone ell, however, and we know of four major problems over the years. First, in our second year we chose the college theater for the presentations because of the space it provided and because it was right across from the art thesis so we would get movement between the two departments since we were holding our sessions on the same evening. The room was checked out one day arid everything seemed to be fine, however, our presentation time was at night and with no natural lighting coming in the windows the lighting was inadequate. Second, we initially assigned very little weight to the posters in terms of the final grade. Consequently, the student team, which performed best in the simulation and also had the best reports and presentations to its board of directors decided put very little effort into their poster. Thus, we had a poster on public display, which was of poor quality. These students did ‘earn a lesson, however, when they saw the quality of their poster compared to the others. They were embarrassed and they merely hung up their poster and walked to a distant area in the room so they would not be seen with their work. This lesson was not lost on those who did quality posters. Third, over the years the quality of the posters has improved but the materials do not seem to hold up as well. In the most recent year the day after the presentations the graphics materials fell off the posters of two of the teams. Thus, it has become necessary to make photographs of the posters in order to have a record on file. Fourth, the posters are Developments In Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 19, 1992 19 becoming a competition in and of themselves and the cost to the students in real dollars is getting quite high. Last year for example, a number of teams spent over $60 dollars on the materials for their posters. Improved quality also has had an impact real on the instructor who also prepares a poster. In the first year the instructor’s poster was in the top 25% but by the second year using exactly the same format it had slipped to the bottom 25%. In the most recent year it was in the top 10% but the materials and the fee to the art major who did the poster was $75. In addition, since the instructor now has someone else with whom he must work (the art student) the lead-time for getting things completed has increased. Finally, we have discovered over the years that we must provide the students with specific information regarding the size of the posters and acceptable materials. We had one team, which produced an extremely large poster, which they had difficulty getting to the room for presentation. Another team did a four-foot by four-foot poster on particleboard, which was so heavy we were concerned about hanging it on the wall. CONCLUSION Even with the problems cited above the use of poster presentations appears to be a valuable tool in the business policy course. The feedback from the students and others has been very positive. Clearly, however, we need to assess the long-term impact on our students in order to validate the usefulness of such an activity. We encouraged others to try this technique. REFERENCES Byars, L. L. (1987), and Strategic Management: Planning and Implementation. New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers. Certo, Samuel C. and J. Paul Peters (1991), Strategic Management: Concepts and Applications. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, Inc. Faria, Anthony J. (1990), Business simulation games after thirty years: Current usage levels in the United States. In James W. Gentry (ed.), Guide to Business Gaming and Experiential Learning. East Brunswick/Kogan Page, London: Nichols/GP Publishing. Gentry, James W. (ed.) (1990), Guide to Business Gaming and Experiential Learning, East Brunswick/Kogan Page, London: Nichols/GP Publishing. Gomolka, E. G., W. A. Ward, and M. A. Parrot (1982), ‘The generation and application of evaluation criteria for management policy and strategy simulation games” in D. J. Fritzsche and L. A. Graf (eds.), The Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning. Gordon, R. A. and J. E. Howell (1959), Higher Education for Business. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. McNair, H. P. with A. C. Hersum (1954), The Case Method at the Harvard Business School. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pearce, J. A. and R. B. Robinson (1991), Strategic Management: Formulation, Implementation, and Control. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin. Pierson, F. C. (1959), The Education of American Businessmen. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Scott, T. W. and A. J. Strickland, III. (1985), Micromatic: A Management Simulation. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. Thompson, A. A., Jr. and A. J. Strickland, III (1990), Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin. Wolfe, Joseph (1990), The evaluation of computer- based business games: Methodology, findings, and future needs. In James W. Gentry (ed.), Guide to Business Gaming and Experiential Learning. East Brunswick/Kogan Page, London: Nichols/Gp Publishing. Developments In Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 19, 1992 20 Table of Contents Volume 19, 1992 The Pedagogical Utility of a Management Simulation Game in a Business Policy Course Modeling Economic Environments in Business Simulations: Some Comparisons and Recommendations Experiential Learning and TQM Principles: Teaching Behavioral Science in a Business School The Use of Poster Presentations as a Final Project in the Business Policy Course The Device Business: A Management Simulation for Strategy Formulation The Advantages of Experiential learning in the Auditing curriculum A Framework for the Identification of Moderated and Mediated Performance consequences of Pedagogical Alternatives Simulating Qualitative Research Relating to Values and Lifestyle Segmentation A New Market Demand Model for Business Simulators Interactive Optimization Using the Method of Relative Improvement Preferences: Methodology and Empirical Evaluation The Service Trainer Simulation Benefits of Internet Computer Networks for ABSEL Members How Should We Measure Experiential Learning? An Assessment of Simulation Usage in Management Accounting Courses The Influence of Myers-Briggs Type and Group Dynamics on Simulation Performance Effective Leadership Behavior in the Desert Storm Arena: An Application of the Vroom-Yetton-Jago Model Installing and Consolidating Work-Team Values: The Effects of a Multicultural Outdoors Experiential Program Key Determinants and Decision performance in a Business Simulations and Experiential Learning environment Multi-Cultural Experiential Learning: A Computer Simulation in Indonesia Attitudes Toward and Emotions Related to Women as Managers: A Replication and Beyond Scenario Approach to Simulating Consumer Expenditures: A Cross-Cultural Analysis Insights into Ethical Decision making Activities and Organizational Performance: A Management Simulation Analysis of College Students and Managers Evaluating a Business Simulation Program for Joint Venture Negotiation and Management Teaching Business Interviewing Strategies with an Experiential Approach Cooperative Learning Across the Business Curriculum Modeling Total Quality Elements into a Strategy-Oriented Simulation Teaching Business Decision making using a Simulator Extending the Educational Utility of a Simulated Competition within the Confines of an Established Undergraduate Marketing Curriculum Expert Systems Versus Traditional Methods for Teaching Accounting Issues Confidence Extremes Diminish Quality Performance in a Total Enterprise Simulation Can Ethics Be Taught? A Simulation Tests a Traditional Ethics Pedagogy Through The Looking Glass, Inc.: Organizational Climate Research as Experiential Pedagogy The use of Cluster Analysis for Business Game Performance Analysis Power and Ethnicity: An Experiential Learning Exercise (How to Sensitize Students to Diversity) Directed Development of Critical and Creative Thinking Skills for Case Analysis Implementing Total Quality Management in a Computerized Business Simulation Product Quality in Business Simulations Use of Simulation for Ethics Education in Management Satisfying the University's Customers through Total Quality Management Instruction: A Case Study Personality Characteristics and Group Performance in Total Enterprise Simulations Concepts of Interval Estimation and Quality Control Charts via Computer Simulated Sampling An Examination of the Effect of Team Cohesion, Player Attitude, and Performance Expectations on Simulation Performance Results The Effectiveness of Inventory Management and Production Scheduling Training in a Total Quality Management Environment Peer Group Indicators of the External Validity of Business Games: A five-year Longitudinal Study Political Strategies and Personal Actions Does Practice make Perfect? Observations on Simulation Trial The Use of A Non-Business Computer Simulation to Teach Marketing Management BankPro Commercial Bank Simulation The Production Game Pursuing Excellence: Work Strengths, Assets and relevant Values (An Exercise) Test of a Short Outward Bound Experience for College Students What is it that we want Student To Learn? Using Two TQM Philosophies when Playing Blackjack The Lagged Effects of Decision Variables on Financial Performance Measures Used in Two business Simulations The Development of an Experiential Exercise for Career Planning and Effective Job search Performance Measuring Quality in Management of Business Pedagogy Exploring Quality and Productivity Improvement: Using and Experiential Process Toward a Generalized Architecture for Intelligent Reactive Management Systems The Quality Game TQX: Using Expert Systems to Improve Training in Total Quality Management A Simulation of the Effect of the Medicaid Payment Lag on the Financial Position of Community Pharmacies The Use of a Board of Directors to Evaluate and Validate Decisions in a Competitive Graduate Management Simulation Course The Impact of Academic Dishonesty on Business Simulations and Experiential Learning Activities Picture Project: An Experience of Icebreaking and/or Decision-Making An Effective Role-playing Exercise for Teaching Requisite TQM Supervisory Attitudes/Behavior Computerized Management Simulations and Some Correlates of Students' Satisfaction The Timing and Stability of Reactions to Market Structure in a Single Player Simulation Environment A Graphics Application Extension for a Simulated Decision Support System Environment Aspects of a Group Project Utilizing Actual Business data and a Computerized Accounting System The Role of Universities' Extended Learning Department in Assisting Organizations Implement Total Quality Management A three-dimensional Learning Experience to Develop Total Quality Management Skills Estimating Quality Costs by Computer Simulation Applications and Examples of Quality Control Software Assessing Business Pedagogy A Demonstration of an Experiential Process for Exploring Quality and Productivity Improvement Processes An Action-Ethics Dilemma: A Demonstration Org Sim Jr.: A 2-3 Hour Version of the 2-Day Blanchard/Murrell Organization Simulation Building Buildings: An Experiential Exercise in Organizational Structure, Communication, Leadership and Group Dynamics Expert Systems for Organization Design: A Demonstration A Demonstration of Product Quality in a Business Simulation: Version 2 of CEO Two Revolutions, Total Quality Leadership, and the Baldy: The Story of Milliken Total Quality after the Award - The Xerox Story Building a Competitive Advantage through Customer Satisfaction and Reengineering Human Resource Planning: Managing the Only Renewable Resource for a Competitive Advantage Using Simulations to Teach International Issues: An analysis of the Multinational Management Game's Learning Environment Quality Function Deployment: A Tutorial Care and Nurturing of Teams Making a Good Thing Better: Adding TQM to Participative management Empowering Organizations to Redesign and Transform Themselves - Eastman Chemical Using Simulations in Field Management Development of an International Life Insurance Company Reinforcing the TQ Environment via Simulation Transforming a Business College into a Total Quality College