Year 3 IT workshop / preparation for poster presentation.
Professor Martin Wills. C504
Contents;
i) General information about poster presentations. Where, why, when?
ii) Three key issues: Content – presentation – understanding.
iii) Features of a good poster - text size, diagrams, colour.
iv) Finding information.
v) Poster structure, layout, preparation, printing.
In detail:
i) General information.
If you have chosen laboratory (CH3C4) or extended laboratory (CH3C6) then you are required to attend a workshop on ‘IT skills’. The objective of this is to provide advice and experience on effective visual presentation of your own work or of a subject. This will be useful for those who are required to give a poster presentation, on a recent research area, as a component of CH3C6. However it will also be of use to anyone writing up a laboratory report. We’re not teaching you how to use powerpoint.
The IT workshop lasts 2 hours and is worth 1 CATS, and is assessed by the completion of a simple task (see end of handout). The poster presentation will be held on Friday 12th February 2010 on the science concourse. Further details will be provided separately.
ii) Three key issues: Content – Presentation – Understanding.
In order to prepare a poster, you will be required to search several literature sources, i.e. books, journals, web material, Scifinder etc. for information. Your supervisor will guide you in your choice of material for the poster. During the poster session, you will be asked questions about the content by two markers. For maximum marks, you should score highly in the following areas:
Content (30%); It goes without saying that the poster has to contain a detailed yet concise summary of a specific area of recent research work. Finding and organising this will require a reasonable amount of research work. Scientists (i.e. the people marking you) usually like to see hard, corroborated, data and facts, rather than extensive speculation.
Presentation (40%); The poster should look good, with appropriate use of colour and diagrams, photos etc. without going ‘over the top’. The poster should be structured in a way that highlights the key points you wish to make. Diagrams should be of good quality and consistent in format, font size etc.
Understanding (30%); You will be asked about the work described in your poster and you would be expected to know about the background to the work, why it was carried out, who did the work and what the key results were. Don’t prepare a long presentation on the work, but be prepared to talk for 2-3 minutes about it. You should also have an awareness of the likely future direction of the work. You may be asked about any papers that you have cited.
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iii) Features of a good poster - text size, diagrams, colour.
A good poster should contain a balanced combination of text, diagrams and pictures, together with the title, names of presenters, references and credits to anyone who assisted you. The exact balance should be appropriate to the content; for example a poster describing a total synthesis would have more diagrams (i.e. created by you) but fewer pictures/photos than a poster describing results obtained using some form of microscopy.
Here are a few things to consider:
-keep text fonts relatively consistent, and of a size appropriate to their relevance. For example, the title would normally be larger than the rest of the text, but don’t have too big a contrast (see Figure 1).
-Don’t make the text too small, or too big (see Figure 2). Reading a poster about 1-1.5m away, arial font, size 14 is about as small as you can reasonably get the font.
-Keep diagrams of chemical structures proportional (contrast diagrams in Figure 3), with consistent font size and bond lengths etc.
-Don’t blow up small pictures (see Figure 4).Avoid resizing diagrams or schemes, as this will make the font sizes etc different. Get the size correct first (e.g in chemdraw), then import them at 100% size.
-Include a note of the source of any diagrams taken from the web or other sources, and reference these in the poster.
-Include references to the source of your material; about 10-12 is good, 3 is too few, 50 is too many! Web links require a date at which they were sampled.
iv) Finding information.
Wherever you can: Online, books, Scifinder, Crossfire, etc. be guided by your supervisor.
v) Poster structure, layout, preparation, printing.
The following steps may assist you:
-First meet with your supervisor and make sure that you understand exactly what area the poster work is supposed to be in.
-Spend a bit of time finding the information on your area before even starting to think about the layout. 10-12 good references (particularly to reviews) will give you plenty of material to fill an A1 poster.
-When you have the material, think about the %age of space you’d like to give to each part of it. For example, you might allocate 30% to the background, 40% to the results and 20% about future work, with 10% for credits and references. You might decide to have a 50:50 split between text and diagrams, or perhaps a different ratio depending on the material you have found.
-Set up a single page in powerpoint with the dimensions of an A1 page, and simply write the poster in it.
-Allow time to print the poster – print a small cheap A4 version first! The A1 posters take ca 15 mins to print, so don’t be in a queue of 35 people at 10pm the night before the presentation!
Short presentation task:
Aim: Prepare a single Powerpoint slide (A4 size) which would be suitable as a poster (we won’t print them out).
Submission: Email it to (earns you 1 CATS credit)
Deadline: Friday following workshop.
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Figure 1:
This is the heading.
This is the text size. Etc.
Looks better than
This is the heading.
This is the text size etc
Figure 2:
Can you read this (arial 8)?
Can you read this (arial 10)?
Can you read this (arial 12)?
Can you read this (arial 14)?
Can you read this (arial 16)?
Can you read this (arial 18)?
Can you read this (arial 20)?
Can you read this (arial 24)?
From 1 metre away?
Figure 3: Chemical structures:
Proportional font/bond lengths:
Consistent font sizes:
Figure 4: Obviously imported diagrams:
Can look OK:
But can look terrible if you manipulate them:
This handout is available in downloadable form and full colour from Prof Wills’s website:
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