Academic Persona

Poster presentations are a form of academic presenting which can allow for a much more engaging discussion of your research. But there is a certain ’science’ to presenting a poster at a conference and taking full advantage of the opportunity.

I’ve collected some resources which might be useful to the academic and student preparing a poster presentation:

• Advice on designing scientific posters, Colin Purrington at Swarthmore College: an excellent in depth discussion about how to present a poster well. Lots of examples and tips. This page also discusses some of the visual attributes and do’s and don’ts of designing a poster.
• Creating effective poster presentations, George Hess, Kathryn Tosney, and Leon Liegel: A good site that shows a step-by-step approach, as well as several “before” and “after” examples of poster redesigns. There is a good discussion on effective layouts and using graphics.
• Biology poster presentation redesign, Gary Richardson: This site shows a redesign of a poster with commentary. This is useful to review before designing your own poster presentation in order to avoid some common mistakes.
• Poster session writing guide, Colorado State University: A very useful sight with valuable writing advice on how to write a poster.

The most popular image search engine, of course, is Google Image Search. However,  threeother engines have built upon the Google resources to provide a better interface and greater options.

imagery is the best and most customizable of the image search engines available. Definitely the best choice here. You can select multiple images, sort and download. You also get more detailed information about the kind of file through an at-a-glance interface. Check out the details page for a list of all the great features. *one note: this interface only works with the firefox web browser.

pixsy searches not just images but video too, in a nice simple interface. You can also search for files, music, as well as a range of categories such as travel, entertainment, and stock photos.

ditto is another search engine that is similar to Google Image Search, but they use different search algorithms and directories to do so - so you can different results.

Many people use a pointer in presentations, either to change slides (which is okay) or to point at the slides with the laser (which is not okay). Being able to change slides without being close to the computer or mouse allows the presenter to move around the room - the presenter is freer to interact with the audience. But the laser pointer, when used the way most people use it, can be extremely distracting and irritate the audience.

Here are some tips:

• Don’t use the laser unless you absolutely have to - Well designed slides combined with a well organized commentary should mean it is unnecessary to use a laser to point.
• Never underline text and read it to the audience at the same time - The audience will feel like their elementary school teacher is reading to them. This is very rude.
• Put the pointer in your weak hand (the hand you don’t write with or gesture with the least) - This will be the least distracting to the audience.
• Don’t point to change slides - A pointer does not work like your TV remote. It uses a radio transmitter/receiver, rather than an infrared transmitter/receiver. This means that you don’t need to point it at anything in order to change the slide

Every now and then I will listen to a presentation that begins with something like:

• I haven’t really had time to prepare for this, but I will do my best.
• I am not really qualified to talk about this as I’ve only just become interested in this topic, but…
• My English is not very good but I will try to do my best - I hope you can understand me.

Although in many Asian cultures, Korea included, Apologies such as this serve to express the speaker’s humbleness, in western culture such apologies only serve to weaken the integrity of the speaker. Audiences will begin to wonder if they have wasted their time in attending this presentation if the speaker announces at the beginning that they are not qualified to give this talk. Likewise, the worst thing to do is to draw direct attention to your own (perceived) faults, like your poor language ability. Most listeners are there to hear content and be informed; they are not there to judge your grammar ability. If a presenter has organized their content well and practiced their presentation, they should be able to communicate their message to the audience, regardless of how (im-) perfect their pronunciation is.

Often, in Korean language presentations we will hear phrases such as:

• 발표시 여러면에서 미숙한 점이 있겠지만 양해해주시기 바랍니다.
• 시간이 여의치 않아 많은 준비를 하지 못했으나 양해해주시기 바랍니다.
• 모국어가 영어가 아니라서 발표시 이해에 어려움이 있더라도 양해해 주시기 바랍니다.

It is important to remember here that the function of these sorts of phrases - to express humbleness - when translated into English have the effect of weakening your integrity and authority. In short, don’t use phrases such as these.

The other thing that second language speakers should be aware of is how they use the word sorry. Basically, there are two kinds of sorry, (1) the apology and (2) the correction. Presenters should be aware of the difference because if they are not they can send the wrong kind of message to their audience.
The long sorry (1) is used to apologize for something - such as for speaking too long or some kind of misunderstanding.

The short sorry (2) is used to signal a correction

• Today I will be talking about nickel oxide, sorry, carbon oxide nano-coatings (the speaker will talk about carbon oxide nano-coatings, not nickel oxide)
• It was Ellis, sorry, Elsworth, who said… (the speaker means Elsworth, not Ellis)

In each of these examples, the speaker is using sorry to indicate a correction - they are not apologizing for their mistake. It is important that the short sorry is SHORT; if it is too long it will sound like an apology. Think of it as sounding like s’ory.

I’ve talked about Hans Rosling in class a number of times. Here is a link to his well-known presentation at TED 2006. The presentation combines statistics and his rich experience and engaging personality to challenge and change our preconceptions about the state of the world.

It is a good example for academic presenters because it shows us that passion and energy are powerful presenting tools. I like how he interacts with the data in such a physical way - it is very engaging.

Some notes:

• Gapminder: the software used to create the statistic animations; it is primarily linked to world health and population statistics; if you visit the website you can create your own ‘gapcasts’ through accessing UN and other international databases.
• TED: an international conference bringing together some great speakers from around the world; videos of their presentations are made available online for free viewing and download; definitely a valuable resource; Hans Rosling’s presentation is also available.

Over the past six weeks I have been involved in a number of Intensive English Programs for various departments at the university. Each program is organized around a set of skills: writing, debating, conversation, and presentation skills. On the last day of each two week program we organize a mock conference where teams of students present to the whole group.

This particular activity has been rewarding for both me and the students and so I thought I would share some of what we do and how we do it.

Basically, the students are required to work in teams of 3 or 4 to produce a 10-12 minute presentation on a topic of their choice.  The only requirements are that topic must fit into some kind of academic in nature, and that it must fit a problem-solution format (situation, problem, solution, evaluation).  I’ve chosen this format because it seems to give them the most flexibility in topic choice and is also a common format in presenting.

Most of the intensive programs follow a 10 day schedule:
Day 1 - Introduction: Students are introduced to each other and the class. We discuss what it means to be an academic; since the majority of students are incoming freshmen they still consider themselves just students. At the end of the class students are informed about the mock conference and asked to think of three topics they would be interested in discussing and presenting.

Day 2 – Selecting topics and teams: At the beginning of class, each student shares their three ideas with the group. The ideas are recorded on the whiteboard by the teacher. Next, students are told they must form a group and select a topic. I encourage them to form groups around topics as these kinds of groups tend to be more motivated. Students mingle and discuss with each other. They find that they must negotiate, compromise, and convince others of their ideas. Once a group has formed, their next step is to go from their general idea to something more specific.

Day 3 – Finding the niche: In this step, students work to determine the specific angle of their presentation, their purpose, and their reason for giving the presentation. This is also the time when we discuss the audience and their role in the presentation. Usually, by the end of the 70 minute period most groups are well on their way to well-defined topic and have developed a workable outline for their presentation.

Day 4 – Testing your ideas on the audience: Up to this point, the other groups are not intimately aware of the ideas of the other groups in the class. In this class the students break into new groups and sell their topic to the other groups. Through this process they can troubleshoot any misunderstandings about content and get a better idea of what their audience needs and wants. We also do an activity where students have one minute to describe their topic to a partner. They do this repeatedly with different partners. By the fourth or fifth partner they have developed a concise and organized description of their topic. This activity is to reinforce the idea that repetition and practice, not a written speech, are the keys to being able to present well.

Day 5 – Tutorials: During this class I usually meet with each group for 15 to 20 minutes to discuss their presentation and assist them with any problem solving.

Day 6 and 7 – First trial run: Each group is assigned a partner group to critique. Two groups present each day. After the presentations, the partner groups get together to discuss and critique each other’s presentation.\

Day 8 – Making it Visual: This class focuses on body language and visual aids. We talk about some of the common mistakes made in these areas, as well as some of the conventions that may be followed in their given field of research. We also spend some time examining the representation of data and how data can be (inadvertently) distorted.

Day 9 – Final trials: each group presents their presentation to the class for a final critique and discussion.

Day 10 – Mock Conference: Generally the conference is organized into two concurrent sessions with 8 to 12 presentations in each session. Presenters are not in any particular order. Each 12 minute presentation is followed by 3-5 minutes Q&A. The instructors-judges also act as moderators and time-keepers. Following the conclusion of the session, the students are given a ballot for the Audience Choice award for best presentation. The judges also select a best presentation for each session. Prizes and certificates for these are awarded at the closing ceremony.

Through this experience the students gain an understanding of the process of presenting, as well as the awareness that presenting well requires more than just a well-written script and perfect English. 

This Visual Aid styleguide, 2.0 addresses many of the issues that a presenter faces when designing their presentation materials. It covers the use of text, bullet points, and common punctuation errors.

• Text
  • What kinds of fonts to use in presentation materials
  • The use of text formatting such as bold, italics, text size, etc.
• Bullet Points
  • Strategies and styles to use in order to communicate well
• Punctuation
  • examples of Do’s and Don’ts

Over the past few months I have been collecting and analyzing some of the errors that I see in presentations. I’ve put together this style guide to help presenters ensure that their presentation is professional in appearance and accurate in content.

There are plans to expand on this guide, but for now, these three areas are covered. Check back in a month for an expanded version

This has got to be the best color-picker available ( http://kuler.adobe.com/ )on the internet. It is much more flexible than any other i have found, and by far the easiest to use.

Select the color relationships you want and drag the sliders to adjust the colors and tones. The corresponding tones and are adjusted automatically for you. At the bottom of the screen is you can see the values in different color spaces.

For presenters using PowerPoint, the RGB values will be the most useful. Just copy these RBG values into the the PowerPoint color-picker.

There is a wealth of colour scheme generators on the net, but by far the easiest and most intuitive one to use is Color Scheme Generator 2 by pixy, The interface is very intuitive and easy to understand. You can also look at different schemes based on 5 different colour relationships (monochrome, contrast, triad, tetrad, and analogic). There is also a feature which allows you to see how a given colour scheme would look to a person with colourblindness.

Color scheme generator:

For more information about colour and accessbility, the following resources would be worth investigating:

WC3 Web Content and Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

For a good description of colour spaces (RGB colour spaces and HSB and HLS colour spaces), check out the following:

Color Picker 2.0 Scroll down the page for the description.

Theoretical and Practical approaches

There are no rules in choosing a color, partly because it is such a subjective thing, but there are some guidelines that can help the presenter make appropriate choices.

There are a variety of physiological and cultural factors that need to be taken into account when considering color. But underlying all this theory is the idea that color has meaning. When designing visual aids, the presenter can use the meaning, connotations and signifiers that various colors have, to create layers of meaning. Tufte talks about this a lot in his books). When a visual contains layers of meaning, it becomes information rich, but not crowded or cluttered; relationships between components or data points are easy to recognize and comprehend. Two good examples of meaning contained in layers are shown below.

Well designed maps for instance, depend on color to convey elevation, points, roads, contour lines, etc. When we think about it, a contour map like the one below contains a lot of information; yet the use of colour helps to organize this information and convey the relationships between data points.

When designing visual aids, presenters need to also be aware that they can create layers of meaning. A well designed set of presentation visual aids can draw their coherence from the effective use of colors. In a largely text-based slide this can be as simple as the headings being one colour and details or minor points being another. When used consistently, the audience quickly and easily starts to see the connection between points and recognizes the structure of the content. The slide below uses color to identify the hierarchy of ideas and separate headings from definitions.

Likewise, the slide below uses color to demarcate different functions within the text. In this example, the students were analyzing the components of the CARS model in a writing class. We looked at a variety of examples, but each example used the same colour identifiers to examine the organization of the text.

In a more visual or pictorial slide, colour can be used to effectively demarcate conceptual boundaries. For example, labels in one color and objects in another. Likewise, color can be used to highlight a visual element (such as using a colour overlay to indicate a key component in a photograph):

A Practical Approach to using colour in presentations