Guidelines for Poster Presentations In Genetics
It is important to remember that a poster is not simply a lab report that has been glued to poster board. In fact, posters contain much less written information than the average lab report, and rely, instead, on the poster presenter to elaborate on points that are simply summarized on the poster itself. Despite its shorter length, however, the hallmark of a good poster is that it can stand on its own. In other words, if one of your classmates were to read your poster without you there to explain it, they would be able to understand your experiments and the conclusions you drew from them. Your instructors will show you examples of posters that can be used as a guideline.
The grading scheme for your posters is as follows:
Format: 5 points
1. Each poster must be developed using Powerpoint on a single slide that is 36" high by 48" wide (In page setup choose the landscape option with the height and width set as indicated above).
2. The poster background should be light, and the text should be dark. This is generally easiest to see. Background images should be avoided, and if used must not interfere with the viewer's ability to see and interpret the poster text and images.
3. The arrangement of text boxes and images should be logical and easy to follow, and should take advantage of the entire poster surface.
4. Figures and Pictures must be high quality (not fuzzy or out of focus), and must have complete, descriptive figure legends.
5. Font for text must be at least 16 pt. Titles must be at least 18 pt. Text must be double-spaced.
Presentation (Judged by Peer Evaluation Form): 10 points
1. Presenters should speak to the audience (not just the instructor) clearly and slowly, and avoid distracting physical habits such as rocking back and forth, playing with their hair, etc.
2. Presenters must make active (point to the important results!) use of the poster figures and pictures to illustrate important results, trends, etc.
3. Presenters may not read directly from the poster, and should avoid use of note cards.
4. All group members must be equally involved in the presentation – but this role does not necessarily have to be a spoken contribution. It is up to the group to clearly describe the role that each individual played in the overall presentation.
Content: 55 points
1. Title (2 points)
a) Must accurately convey the topic of the poster.
b) Must contain the names of all authors.
2. Abstract (5 points)
This section should be no more than 250 words long. Because the abstract summarizes the rest of the poster, it is generally written last. Your abstract must summarize the:
a) Purpose of the experiment,
b) Methods used,
c) Results of the experiments, and
d) Conclusions drawn from those results.
3. Introduction (10 points)
This section is generally just a couple of paragraphs long. A good introduction convinces the reader that your experiment is important, and that you are well prepared to conduct it. The introduction must:
a) Address the purpose of the experiment,
b) Provide enough high quality background information (and references) for the reader to understand the current status of the field and the need for the proposed research,
c) Provide a clear rationale that justifies the experimental approach taken, but does
d) Not include any results or conclusions.
4. Materials and Methods (3 points)
This section is no more than one page long, and must:
a) Be written in third person, past tense,
b) Give enough detail that the reader understands the experimental approach taken,
No results or conclusions should be present in the methods section.
5. Results (10 points)
The results section:
a) Contains properly summarized data (averages, not raw data)
b) Contains high resolution images and showing good quality data
c) Contains complete, numbered figure legends for each figure/table. The figure legends must give enough descriptive information for each figure to stand alone.
d) Does not contain hand-written data, labels, etc.
6. Discussion and Conclusions (10 points)
a) Each figure/table in the results section must be discussed in this section, however
b) The written portion of this section generally consists of only summary information, which is elaborated upon by the poster presenter(s) (see example posters).
7. Quality of References (5 points)
Your score will be based on achieving at least a ‘3’ in each area in the Rubric for Assessing Biological Information Literacy, as we believe that is an appropriate goal score for sophomores. However, remember that a ‘4’ is the gold standard, so feel free to overachieve!
a) The resources are primarily professional level databases; edited volumes and monographs; discipline-specific annual reviews; peer-reviewed articles.
b) Conflicting ideas are cited and used to justify the research question or approach.
c) Information from sources is appropriately synthesized. Understanding of the underlying science is solid, but may still have some gaps.
d) Most gaps of knowledge in the field are accurately captured and used to justify the research question.
e) Reference Style:
- References must be cited parenthetically (Author, date) in the text
- You may choose any citation style that includes all authors, the article title, the journal title, volume, page numbers and year.
- If you get a research article from a search engine, do not use the search link as the reference – use the correct journal citation format.
8. Annotated Bibliography
Each group must turn in a separate annotated bibliography that contains the complete reference for each paper, along with a brief (2-3 sentences) description of what the article is about and how it is being used to support the poster. This section will help us to determine the quality of your references.
9. Style and Grammar (Final Percentile Adjustment – up to 10%). The posters should be completely free of grammatical errors, as these detract from the overall impact of the poster.