Poster Presentations

HONORS THESIS POSTER PRESENTATIONS:
PURPOSES, LOGISTICS, AND GUIDELINES

PURPOSES
The Honors Thesis poster session is designed primarily to display the Honors project to the public and to receive feedback with which to enrich the finished product.  More particularly, the presentations should enable students to see whether essential components of their paper hold up under scrutiny.  These components include the research question/hypothesis, approach, methodology, discussion of results, conclusions, limitations, and implications.  Finally, the sessions afford an opportunity to refine communications skills, both oral and visual.

The process should encourage students to sharpen and articulate the focus of their study as they submit their work to public scrutiny.  They may find that poster session conversations, student-student and professor-student, serve to uncover holes in their research, analysis, conclusions, etc.  In some cases, there may not be time to fill in those deficits prior to the completion of the thesis; however, the discovery may provide new direction or pinpoint key areas that can be focused on and improved. 

LOGISTICS
Early in the spring semester, all Honors students and their advisors should be advised of the basic elements of the poster session: Time, place, format, presentation materials, evaluation guidelines, and publicity.  Factors to be considered include providing adequate space (e.g., wall space, tables, easels), allowing enough time to accommodate visits by students, faculty, and others who may have varying schedule commitments, choosing display materials (i.e., easels, poster boards, printouts) which are readily available, arranging publicity and refreshments.

GUIDELINES
In order to assure successful poster sessions, a number of questions should be considered by the participants:

a) APPEARANCE

• Does the display attract the viewer's attention?
• Is the poster well organized and easy to follow?
• Do graphics and other visuals enhance the presentation?

b) CONTENT

• Does the abstract clearly summarize the key components and result?
• Are the research questions and hypotheses stated clearly?
• Is the approach taken appropriate to the problem and technically sound?
• Are there enough details provided so that the results are understood?
• Is the poster free of unnecessary details?
• Are the conclusions clearly stated?
• Are the conclusions adequately supported by the information presented?
• Are both the limitations and the opportunities for further study made clear?

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