Poster Presentations

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Poster Presentations

• Poster
• Presentation
• Procedure

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What is a poster session?

• Science fair for grown ups
• Why have poster sessions?
• Efficiency!

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What is the purpose of poster presentations?

• Overt sharing of research
• Covert Networking!
• Creating collegiality/connections among
  practitioners
• Fishing for graduate students and post docs

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The three parts of posters prep are?

• Creating a Successful Poster
• Preparing the Presentation
• Knowing the Procedure

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Posters are made for the eyes.
The poster is a of your research. The
audience is on the move, not sitting still.
Thus, visual appeal is critically important.
BALANCE Text and Graphics. Most common
error of new poster makers too much text that is
too small to read
visual representation
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Creating the Poster prep

• Prepare Text
• Title Affiliation
• Abstract (use all)
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• For IMRD, write a short text and bulleted
  points

• Choose Graphics
• Background image that matches theme of research
• All of or excerpt of survey/s
• Graphs of key results
• Relevant photos

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Creating the Poster layout

• Overall layout of poster depends on what you want
  to convey to audience
• What it most important?
• What is most persuasive?
• Great Web-based help
• Michael Alley-- http//www.writing.engr.psu.edu/po
  sters.html
• Colin Purrington -- http//colinpurrington.com/tip
  s/academic/posterdesign

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Creating the Poster design process

• 3 or 4 panel design with several ways to
  organize poster
• Use PowerPoint
• Sketch out by hand first
• Set slide size in Page Set up for 44 (width) x
  36 (height) (or whatever poster session
  requires)
• Lay out whole poster using text boxes with
  15-20 (or whole page) view
• Enlarge to 25-50 to work on individual parts
• Save frequently!
• Check whole poster for balance before printing
• Print in CSE lab or Arch lab for 12 --

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Posters require performance.

• Yes, Virginia, there is still a presentation!
  But its
• Conversational chatting about your research
  where you are the expert
• YET
• Still a Dialogue cannot hog the floor

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Presenting the Poster prep

• PRIME DIRECTIVE
• For each section of your work, be able to answer
  the wh-questions who, what, when, why, where,
  how

KNOW THY RESEARCH
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Presenting the Poster prep

• Prepare and Practice a 45-60 second response to
  the killer question So, tell me about your
  research. One sentence each
• Topic significance of topic
• Research Question
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion

the preeminent fishing question!
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Presenting the Poster killer question example
Given the rate of divorce TOPIC which is about
50 of all marriages SIGNIFICANCE, I wanted to
examine whether young people believe that living
together before marriage enhances the chance of
marital success RESEARCH QUESTION.  I designed
a questionnaire which included some yes/no
questions, some likert scale questions, and a
semantic differential which I then distributed to
a college population METHOD. Overall,
participants revealed an interesting contrast
between a fairly high acceptance of cohabitation
as positive for many aspects of a relationship
such as working out household duties and
increasing intimacy while still having some
doubts about the desirability of a mate who'd
lived with former partners RESULT.  This
suggests that among young unmarried people,
beliefs about cohabitation are actually pretty
similar to beliefs about marriage -- where men
and women prefer to live with someone who is
committed to the relationship but who hasn't had
too many previous live-in relationships
DISCUSSION.
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Presenting the Poster Qs

• Plan for other open-ended questions
• What is most important/significant about your
  research?
• What should happen next?
• How does this relate to the field?
• Any practical applications?

Prepare Practice
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Steps for success include

• Bring 20-50 copies of handout with copy of poster
  on one side (color if you can afford it) and
  brief summary of project, short list of sources,
  and your contact info on the other
• Other material if applicable (copy of survey
  instrument, brochures, etc).
• Stand next to poster and smile!

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Presenting Posters questions?

• Qs?