Better Presentations:
avoiding last year’s
pitfalls Dr Verina Waights
Lead Judge - OU Poster Competition
Aims
• To build on feedback given to students following last year’s poster
competition
•
to consider the research element of posters rather than their design
•
to prepare for oral presentation of your poster
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Initial planning
Target audience
• general interest
Poster
• Your project title, your name and the OU logo must be clearly visible
• Don’t overcrowd and ensure it can be read from a distance
Poster should ‘stand alone’
• present your research without needing further explanation
•
tell a discrete story in the space available (be selective!)
•
highlight your contribution to a team project
3
Poster content 1
Present your research in a logical manner
• Background, aims, methods, results, conclusions
• Don’t need to use these exact headings but need to state what you did, how
you did it, who or what was involved, how the data was analysed, what
results you obtained, what your conclusions are
Give sound academic argument for your research
• What do you want to find out?
• Why is this research interesting/important?
• What contribution to knowledge have you made, who will benefit from your
findings?
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Poster content 2
Only include relevant material
• Aims of the research described in poster
• Results that shed light on aims of this particular piece of research
Conclusions
• Should link back to initial aims of research
• Show relevance of project
End poster with a clear take-home message
5
Tips
• Explain terminology
• Keep text to a minimum
• Use diagrams to aid understanding (refer to them in the text)
• Ask a friend to read your poster
• Proof read a draft A1 version - allow time to make amendments
• Make an IMPACT!
• Don’t
• Assume audience are familiar with your project/field
• Use acronyms
• Give so little information that the point of the research is lost
6
Presenting your poster
Introduce yourself and be enthusiastic!
Allow people to read your poster by themselves if they wish
Use your poster to illustrate the key points of your presentation
•
Don’t just read it out verbatim
•
Check your audience are following your reasoning
•
Don’t use specialist terminology without giving its meaning
Prepare for questions
•
Rehearse answering possible questions that could be posed by people
either familiar and unfamiliar with your field
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Activity (to try later)
• Find another student who is unfamiliar with your project
• You have three minutes to describe the research you intend to present in
your poster (this can be tricky as you won’t have your poster to help you)
• Once you have finished your audience can ask three or four questions about
your research
• Your audience then tells you what they have learned about your research.
Could they understand what your project was about and why you were doing
it? Did they need you to clarify anything?
• If the other student would like to try this for themselves you can act as the
audience for them
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