How to Create a Poster Presentation for an Academic Meeting

1. How to Create a Poster Presentation for an Academic Meeting Adapted from: Developing Scholarly Abstracts by Mindy Smith and Designing and Presenting Poster by Deborah Sleight

2. Objectives • Describe the steps in preparing an abstract that can then be used to create your poster presentation • Introduce you to types of poster presentations • Provide rules for summarizing information to then be turned into a poster • Provide framework for creating poster • WORKSHOP!!!!!

3. Stay Tuned…. • Next time we’ll work on • More poster creation focusing on organizing content/appearance of the poster • Begin the discussion of how to present a poster at a conference

4. Writing your abstract…. • Follow the directions (conference or journal) • Background, methods, results, conclusion • Number of words? • Peak the readers interest (title) • Be concise • Highlight key findings only • Conclusions based on data presented • Follow the directions!!!!

5. The name says it all • Title • Descriptive • Informative • May give the answer or hint at it

6. Introduction • Introduction • 1-2 sentences (The Why of the project) • Hook • Purpose • Why this is needed… • Study question • Hypotheses (if applies)

7. Methods • Structured (1-2 sentences each) • Study overview • Subjects • Measures • Procedures • Data analysis

8. Results/Conclusions • Results • Key findings • or expected findings (2-3 sentences) • Conclusions/Discussion • 1-2 sentences: • Highlight main finding • DO NOT speculate • Note unique feature

9. Common Problems • Disorganized • Too much information • Stick to the main question you went after • Ask someone to edit for you • No data • Note current status if study isn’t complete yet may also mention planned analysis if there is any

10. Summarizing your work • Why? • Small amount of space on a poster, and only a small amount of time to attract readers to your poster • Thus summarizing helps to : • Make clear what the project is • Makes the project look interesting • Makes the project look like it could be understood in a few minutes

11. How to Summarize • Know your project: • A research poster should provide the information called for in the IMRAD format: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. • Use your abstract • You’ve already summarized it if you’ve done this • Summarize from Memory • This will get to the “important stuff” of the project and what you feel most comfortable with

12. General Rules for Summarizing • Delete trivia, details, redundancy and non-crucial words such as articles (“a” and “the”), adjectives, adverbs and obvious verbs. • Use bullets to set off summarized text. • If you have an important list put each item on a separate line with a bullet in front of it.

13. General Rules for Summarizing • Generalize by categorizing like items or actions. If there are lists of items or events, decide if each item is important in its own right. If it isn’t, think of one main heading or word for this information, instead of listing each item or event.