Poster Presentation

Kathryn Hoppe

Green River Community College

This activity has been reviewed by 2 review processes

This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.
This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process. This review took place as a part of a faculty professional development workshop where groups of faculty reviewed each others' activities and offered feedback and ideas for improvements. To learn more about the process On the Cutting Edge uses for activity review, see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.

This page first made public: Jul 16, 2009

Summary

Students are required to do independent research on a topic of their choosing. They are then required to construct a poster that explains the main points of their topic using a combination of words and graphics. This presentation format is less stressful for many students than given a traditional talk and it allows the rest of the class to more easily interact and ask question of the presenter.

Online Resources/Computer Software | College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)

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Context

Audience

This assignment can be adapted for use for any level course. I typically use it for 1st and 2nd year students who have not had extensive practice at giving oral presentations in front of a class.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Student must have basic writing skill, and they must be able to read and assimilate information.

How the activity is situated in the course

This activity is part of a cumulative projects. They students present their projects on the last weeks of class. An important part of this project is for each student to read and evaluate the posters of their peers. I find that students learn a lot from each other during this exercise.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

The content of this project is determined by the students in the class. I require them to get their topic approved by me in order to make sure that it conforms with the general topic of the class, but I do not assign a specific topic.

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

Students have to be able to take a complex topic and demonstrate their understanding of it by summarizing the main points in both visual and oral presentations.

Other skills goals for this activity

This project gives students practice in oral presentation and a chance to develop research skills using both library resources and the WWW.

Description of the activity/assignment

To prepare their presentations students do background reading on a topic of their choosing. They are required to prepare a visual poster presentation of their topic that incorporates graphic elements and a short written summary of their topic.
In class students are required to give a five minute oral presentation using their poster to illustrate their talk. They must then answer questions from their classmate and instructor.
The final element of this assignment requires students to evaluate the work of their classmates and to ask questions about the topics other students present.

Determining whether students have met the goals

Students are graded based on their oral presentation as well as the poster that they have created.
They are graded based on accuracy as well as their presentation clarity and format.
The exact breakdown of the grade is given to students as part of the assignment, and they are asked to evaluate their peers using these same criteria.

More information about assessment tools and techniques.