Environmental Geologyposter presentation grading scheme

Due by week 12

Worth 100 points

You will make your poster using PowerPoint and print it out as a single sheet using the plotter in the Geography/Geology department computer lab. Some teaching assistants will be available to help you in this on Monday and Wednesday, April 12-14 during class time. If you are already have the know-how, feel free to make your poster yourself.

Your poster must be 40 inches wide and 40 inches high. Please use the format provided on the web site

Your poster must be legible and readable from at least three feet away. So make sure you use large fonts (minimum 24 points) for your text. Figures/photos/pictures should also be appropriately large. Figures MUST have figure captions.

Your poster MUST have the title of your project, names of the presenters and the abstract among other things.

Feel free to use colors, but do it moderately. Don't let the background of your poster steal away from the content.

This is the grading scheme I will be using for your poster. I will have a separate but similar sheet for you for evaluating posters of other groups.

Purpose of the project/need for the project: Is it clear from the poster WHY exactly you chose the topic? What are you trying to accomplish with this presentation? Is the need for this project clearly presented on your poster? 10 pts

Question: What research question/hypothesisis being addressed in your poster? WHY is that an important question? 5 pts

Information/Data: What information did you use to address that question? How did you use that information? Do you need more information to definitely settle the question you are addressing? Did you manage to collect the data you mentioned in your proposal? 40 pts

(This is vital, folks… a big chunk of your grade depends on your data and presenting that data. I will compare your proposal to your poster and I will expect a justification in case there is a discrepancy between the data presented in your poster and the data you said you were going to collect in your proposal. Your grade will depend on that justification big time (if something went wrong, you got to explain what went wrong and why).

Data interpretation/conclusion(s): What conclusion(s) can be drawn from the data presented in the poster? Is there ANY OTHER possible interpretation of your data? 30 pts

Assumption(s): What are the main assumptions behind the conclusion? Did you take anything for granted before interpreting your data? 5 pts

Overall presentation: Does your poster flow easily from part to part? Can someone without a lot of background in your topic understand your poster by themselves? 10 pts

Poster presentation Self evaluation and report

Due by week 16 of the semester

Worth 50 points

Each one of you must do the self evaluation individually and separately. Your report should be significantly different from those submitted by your group member(s)

Your report must have

  1. Presentation/project title.
  2. Name(s) of group member(s)
  3. (2 points) Why did you choose to do this particular project? (50 words minimum)
  4. (2 points) How much did you know about your presentation topic before you started the project? (50 words minimum)
  5. (6 points) Did you learn anything new about your presentation topic because of this project? If yes, then what did you learn? (100 words minimum)
  6. (5 points) What were your personal expectations when you started on this project? (100 words minimum)
  7. (15 points) How well were your expectations fulfilled? Explain your answer (100 words minimum) I would look for a detailed explanation here. Write what makes you think you learned whatever you hoped to learn from this experience. Or, if you felt you didn't really learn anything at all, explain why you feel that way. Be honest with yourself either way. I will NOT take off points if you say that you felt horrible about the entire experience, and tell me exactly what was wrong about the whole thing, but one word answers or vague responses will result in a grade markdown.
  8. (5 points) Briefly describe your experience in interacting with your partner(s) (100 words minimum). Again, I'm looking for a fairly detailed answer here. How did you decide to share the workload fairly? Did you feel comfortable working with your group member(s)? Did you learn anything about yourself from working on this project that you didn't know before?
  9. (10 points) What are your impressions of the in-class poster presentation event? (100 words minimum). Here I'm looking for your candid report of what you learned from doing the presentation as well as from reviewing/critiquing the presentations of your peers. Did you learn anything from the entire event? Why or why not?
  10. (5 points) What is your overall impression of this project? (100 words minimum) Summarize your report in this section.

Just so you know, once you hand in your report, it becomes a completely confidential document, meaning I will NOT share it with your project partner(s) or anyone else