Preparing for your Capstone Oral Defense
The capstone oral defense is conducted by phone and lasts one hour. Your committee consists of your mentor and one additional mentor from Western Governors University.
Oral Defense Procedure
1. The oral defense begins by having each of your committee members introduce themselves.

2. You will be asked to begin your short presentation using PowerPoint. Your PowerPoint should contain no more than 10-15 slides!!! Your presentation should be

approximately 15 minutes long and include:

PART 1: A short self-introduction
PART 2: An overview of your final capstone project: Why you choose your project, overview of the problem, what your project was, any special instructional strategies

you used, how you used technology, what you found in your formative evaluation (for MLT students only).
PART 3: What you learned in each domain of study and how you will apply it to your professional work.
o Instructional design domain
o Research fundamentals domain
o Technology integration
o Measurement and evaluation domain

We encourage the use of pictures but please be careful of your file size. Your PowerPoint presentation should not exceed 1-2 Megabytes in size.
Please send your PowerPoint to your mentor at least 3-4 days before your scheduled oral defense. Your final PowerPoint will be emailed to your committee for your oral

defense.
3. Following your presentation your committee will ask you questions – see the sample oral defense questions, study them and be prepared to answer them.
4. After your committee has finished asking questions you will be asked to hang up your phone. Your committee will deliberate. Your mentor will call you back and

conference you back into the oral defense. You will then be told whether you passed.

ORAL CAPSTONE QUESTIONS

In addition to the following sample questions, please be prepared to share with your Capstone Facilitator what you learned in each domain of study and how you will

apply this to your professional work.

1. Why did you select this topic?

2. How did what you’ve learned throughout your studies at WGU influence your project?

3. What specifically that you learned during your studies at WGU did you utilize during your project?

4. What is/are your research question(s)?

What is the significance of your study?

5. Were there any issue(s) of researcher bias?

7. What are the limitations of your study?

8. Why did you choose the research design you used?

What measures did you take to protect Human Subjects?

10. What were your findings?

11. What in the literature supports/disputes your findings?

12. What are the implications of your findings?

13. How do you plan to disseminate your findings?

14. What are your recommendations as a result of your findings?

15. What did you learn about research by doing this project?

16. What was the most challenging aspect of your research?

17. What was the most rewarding aspect of your research?

18. What would you have done differently if you had the time and the money?

19. How has what you have learned throughout your studies at WGU influenced your practice?