Poster Presentations
A poster presentation is a great opportunity for individuals just getting their feet wet presenting at academic conferences and conventions. According to Nicol and Pexman (2003), the goal of a poster “is to summarize findings in a clear, interesting way to facilitate comprehension. Ultimately, the aim is for visitors to the poster to understand what the study was about and what the results were. The more visually appealing, well organized, and informative the poster is, the more likely people are to understand the study and findings” (p. 159). During a typical poster presentation, an author or group of authors will stand next to poster and individuals will walk around reading the posters and talking to the author(s) about the study. One of the nice things about poster sessions is that they tend to be fairly low key and full of energy. You may even want to consider making a handout that summarizes your study to individuals who talk to you about your study. You could also have a stack of copies of your actual paper to hand out to individuals as they talk to you during the poster session. For undergraduate and graduate students, all of the regional communication associations have competitive poster competitions during their conventions. Presenting your original research at a communication conference is a very good resume builder whether you plan on entering graduate school or the corporate sector, and poster sessions provide a fairly nonthreatening way to do this even for individuals who have high public speaking anxiety.
At this point, you may be asking yourself “what does a poster actually look like that’s presented at a communication conference?” To give you a general idea of how posters are typically formatted, we’ve created a simple graphic to help you understand. The graphic is an adobe acrobat file, so you can save and print the file on its own or just look at it here online.
First and foremost, ever conference or convention has different requirements for the sizes of the poster, so you should make sure you find out how large your poster can be before you get to the conference. Furthermore, you’ll want to know if your poster should be free standing (like on a table), displayable on an easel, or will be tacked to a cork board. The most common sized poster is probably the 36” by 48” poster because this is the most common size of foam board and for tri-fold posters. Foam board is probably the number one choice for easel displays, whereas tri-fold posters are great for table-top displays and easels. The reason we suggest both the foam board and tri-fold posters is because they tend to have a thickness to them that allows them to stand up on their own on an easel. If you tried to use regular poster board, you’ll have a lot of problems keeping the poster in place.
Once you know the basic size of the poster, it’s time to determine what information needs to be put on the poster board. First and foremost, your poster cannot be a simple retelling of your study. In fact, we’ve all seen some lazy poster presenters who literally just tack up their entire paper on the poster with no changes at all. As communication scholars, we’ve all taken public speaking and should know a little about the importance of visual aids, and that’s exactly what a poster should be – a visual aid. Remember the purpose of a poster session is to interact with other people discussing your research study as they walk by your poster. The more interesting the poster is, the more likely people are going to stop and talk to you about your research.
You’ll notice in sample posterthat there are a number of different parts commonly seen on a poster. The first part is the name of your study centered at the top of the poster along with the author(s) names and college/university affiliations. After the paper title and your names, everything else is a little more creative. We provided you a simple format you can follow in the sample poster, but this is by no means the only format you could use for your poster. For example, if you have a large number of research questions and hypotheses, you may not end up including the references or acknowledgement sections on your poster. If you have too many research questions and hypotheses, you may end up only putting the three or four most important findings on your poster.
The first box you’ll see on the poster is the abstract box. We think it’s a good idea to include your abstract on your poster because it gives a general over view of your paper. People may not stop and ask you questions, but they are more likely to walk by and quickly read your abstract. Furthermore, abstracts are often great conversation starters with people reading your poster.
The second box we’ve included on our sample poster in the sample poster is the method box. Whether you conducted a qualitative, quantitative, or rhetorical/crucial study, people are going to want to know a little about your methodology. Obviously, you cannot provide all of the intricate details of the method you used in your study, but you can provide enough information to quickly explain what it is that you did.
The third, fourth, and fifth boxes are designed for the real heart of your study or your research questions and/or hypotheses. Some individuals like to clump all of their research questions and/or hypotheses into one box and then their results in another box, but we think this ultimately ends up confusing people examining your poster. For this reason, we recommend listing a research question or hypothesis followed by what you found. Ultimately, this will help you demonstrate exactly what it is that you found in your study in a quick and efficient manner.
The sixth box is for your overall conclusions from your study. We often call this the “so what” box, or the “why should we really care about these findings” box. If you have multiple important conclusions that can be made as a result of your study, we strongly recommend bulleting them to make it easier to read.
The seventh and eighth boxes contain information that may or may not always be overly relevant. The seventh box contains a list of important references or works cited. Obviously, you cannot include all of the references or works cited listed in your manuscript. However, if there are a handful that are very important, go ahead and list them on your poster. The eighth box is one that is technically only necessary if your project was funded by someone. Many research projects receive grant funding for the project, and one common requirement of grants is that any presentation made about the study funded by the grant must acknowledge the source of funds.
In this section we have examined the different parts of Figure 16.2 in an effort to help you understand how to create a top notch research poster. Before we move on to the next section though, we want to stress a number of key elements in making a stellar poster:
1) Black and White is boring, so make sure you add color. But don’t go overboard and start bedazzling your poster – there comes a point when there is too much flash.
2) 12 point Times New Roman or Courier New font may look great on the page, but cannot be read at a distance. When making your poster, stand at least five feet away from all words and see whether you can easily read them. If you can’t read your poster, no one else will bother trying to read your poster.
3) A poster is a not a research paper, so there is no need to double space text that appears on the poster.
4) A poster is not an instant message or text message, so avoid internet lingo on your poster (unless relevant). And make sure you use both capital and lowercase letters.
5) Too much text on a poster can be boring, so using lists and bullets of information will be greatly appreciated by your readers. Furthermore, graphs, charts, and pictures are pretty and can help get information across much faster.
6) Make sure you use headings for each section of your poster. People get lost very easily, so headings help them follow what you’re saying.
7) A poster is a visual aid that should aid you in having a discussion with someone about your research project. The goal of your poster is to help you not hinder you.