Aisles of freshly printed ink on large format paper are a hallmark of major scientific conferences all over the globe. Poster sessions are an arena where seasoned and budding scientists get to communicate about their work, network with peers, and determine new directions in their research. But how can we bring this icon of scientific discourse into the digital classroom? In remote and synchronous online courses, virtual poster sessions can be implemented as an assignment and exercise that allows students to practice real world skills within the community of support inside their course.
Poster sessions have long been a tradition in on-ground courses, and are used to give students a taste of what scientific inquiry and discussion is like beyond the classroom. I’ve witnessed countless gatherings of excited students crowded around posters hung proudly on display in hallways at the end of term. These sessions are great practice for students who plan to go to graduate or professional schools and allow students to begin to sculpt their curriculum vitae. Organizing and presenting research reaches into the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy concerning creation, synthesis, and organization of ideas (University of Utah, 2019). Add a peer review feature and students are also able to work at the level of “evaluate” just below that, and make judgements about research questions and provide recommendations for improvement (University of Utah, 2019).
Even for the students that will leave academia and embark in a more corporate setting, the skills of organizing ideas into presentations and communicating clearly are valuable and necessary. Huang (2002) notes that “Adult learners want to learn skills related to their real life or work experience...The learning environment should provide real-world, case-based environments for meaningful and authentic knowledge” (p.34). As educators we always want to look for the connection between our content objectives and real-world skill development. We call this “Authentic Learning” (Huang, 2002).
Kenneth Buetow, PhD, a Professor of Life Sciences, deployed a virtual poster session as a culminating experience for his students in a recent run of his Functional Genomics course, which moved to remote instruction in the middle of term due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The virtual poster session consisted of concurrent Zoom sessions shared among the class where fellow students and instructors could visit to hear the presentations and ask questions.
As sometimes occurs in the online environment, things did not immediately go accordingly to plan.“I mistakenly thought I could host all of the Zoom rooms as the instructor, but Zoom doesn’t allow a single user to host multiple meetings at once. I knew Zoom’s breakout rooms feature wouldn’t work because students are unable to move freely between them as one would walk down an aisle of posters… In real time I deployed a Google Sheet where each student pair was able to put the title of their poster and generate their own zoom meeting link.” Buetow was impressed to see how helpful the students were in real-time problem solving and adept they were at navigating the sudden change. Students used the share screen feature to share the visual view of their poster and had their video and audio feeds enabled for peers dropping by to ask questions. “Several of them used the waiting room feature, so they could answer all of the questions of a group of reviewers before more showed up”, much like how in live conferences interested parties stand to the side of your poster until you are ready to speak with them.
Just like when he hosts this activity in on-ground courses, Buetow had students fill out an online survey that documents which posters they have reviewed and asks them to analyze the scientific content of the poster and the presenters ability to communicate it. “In this way I can hold students accountable for reviewing the other posters and ensure the presenters have an audience, but more importantly it also teaches them what to look for when reading a poster and helps them develop the skills of discernment any scientist needs to be successful”. The scores given by peers are averaged towards a percentage of presenter grades. The cumulative feedback is also given back to the presenters so they can work changes into any future research or presentations. As Huang, 2002 states “learning should involve interaction with other people or environments, which foster potential development through instructors’ guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers ... if instruction uses cooperative learning properly, it can improve students’ social skills or interpersonal skills” (p. 33). Through both presentation and evaluation students are developing a collaborative learning environment.
There are also multiple class sessions of presenting so that each student can be with their poster but also view a good number of their peers on days when they are not presenting. Having alternate days also allows the students to focus on presenting or reviewing, but not need to worry about doing both on the same day. They are better able to focus their efforts.
Buetow says, “I also kept the main Zoom room I'd created for the class and gave them time before each session for general questions.” Buetow says although they had to navigate challenges in real-time, students were overwhelmingly happy with the result of their poster sessions and found the activity enjoyable.
Even for the students that will leave academia and embark in a more corporate setting, the skills of organizing ideas into presentations and communicating clearly are valuable and necessary. Huang (2002) notes that “Adult learners want to learn skills related to their real life or work experience...The learning environment should provide real-world, case-based environments for meaningful and authentic knowledge” (p.34). As educators we always want to look for the connection between our content objectives and real-world skill development. We call this “Authentic Learning” (Huang, 2002).
As sometimes occurs in the online environment, things did not immediately go accordingly to plan.“I mistakenly thought I could host all of the Zoom rooms as the instructor, but Zoom doesn’t allow a single user to host multiple meetings at once. I knew Zoom’s breakout rooms feature wouldn’t work because students are unable to move freely between them as one would walk down an aisle of posters… In real time I deployed a Google Sheet where each student pair was able to put the title of their poster and generate their own zoom meeting link.” Buetow was impressed to see how helpful the students were in real-time problem solving and adept they were at navigating the sudden change. Students used the share screen feature to share the visual view of their poster and had their video and audio feeds enabled for peers dropping by to ask questions. “Several of them used the waiting room feature, so they could answer all of the questions of a group of reviewers before more showed up”, much like how in live conferences interested parties stand to the side of your poster until you are ready to speak with them.
Just like when he hosts this activity in on-ground courses, Buetow had students fill out an online survey that documents which posters they have reviewed and asks them to analyze the scientific content of the poster and the presenters ability to communicate it. “In this way I can hold students accountable for reviewing the other posters and ensure the presenters have an audience, but more importantly it also teaches them what to look for when reading a poster and helps them develop the skills of discernment any scientist needs to be successful”. The scores given by peers are averaged towards a percentage of presenter grades. The cumulative feedback is also given back to the presenters so they can work changes into any future research or presentations. As Huang, 2002 states “learning should involve interaction with other people or environments, which foster potential development through instructors’ guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers ... if instruction uses cooperative learning properly, it can improve students’ social skills or interpersonal skills” (p. 33). Through both presentation and evaluation students are developing a collaborative learning environment.
There are also multiple class sessions of presenting so that each student can be with their poster but also view a good number of their peers on days when they are not presenting. Having alternate days also allows the students to focus on presenting or reviewing, but not need to worry about doing both on the same day. They are better able to focus their efforts.
Buetow says, “I also kept the main Zoom room I'd created for the class and gave them time before each session for general questions.” Buetow says although they had to navigate challenges in real-time, students were overwhelmingly happy with the result of their poster sessions and found the activity enjoyable.
Create a Poster Session Experience
In order to recreate the poster session experience in your classroom you will need:
Huang, H.-M. (2002). Toward constructivism for adult learners in online learning environments. British Journal of Educational Technology, 33(1), 27–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8535.00236
Post author:
Lenora Ott is an instructional designer in the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University. Lenora assists faculty with developing and launching their online courses and provides long term evaluation, redesign, and support for online coursework. Her passion is empowering faculty to create meaningful learning experiences for their students and themselves online. She has worked in higher education for 7 years and has a Master of Science in Global Technology and Development from Arizona State University and a Graduate Certificate in Educational Technology from Northern Arizona University.
- A video conferencing platform (e.g. Zoom)
- Collaborative shared document or spreadsheet software (e.g. Google Docs)
- A survey tool that students can fill out repeatedly that allows the instructor to average a column of scores for a given team (e.g. Google Forms, Survey Monkey, or possibly one within your Learning Management System (LMS)).
Set Up the Experience
- Inform students of the days and times they will either present or review and identify how many posters a student should peer review.
- Make sure students are familiar with your chosen video conferencing platform and have practiced sharing their presentation and using any necessary features within the software.
- Create a collaborative document for students to post their video conference link, along with their names and title of their research. Give each team an assigned number or code that can be put at the top of review forms concerning their poster.
- Create a video conference room meeting link as an instructor to open and close the virtual poster session. Post it for all students and be sure to communicate date, time, and time zone.
- Design a data collection form for students to review peer posters. You may wish to base this on rubrics and learning outcomes within your course for the poster presentation assignment, or those of research being presented in a specific academic society.
- Make sure the form:
- Allows students to mark which poster/presentation they are viewing in a way that is sort-able (e.g. a number system: Poster 1, Poster 2, etc.)
- Allows a student to identify who is completing the rubric, so they can get credit for their work reviewing peers.
- Gives a numeric score that can be averaged to calculate grades as needed.
- Allows you to remove identifying information of reviewers before sharing it back with peers, if the peer review is anonymous.
- You may wish to share this evaluation form with everyone in advance of poster creation so they know what their peers will be looking for in their work.
- Post the links for all the meetings and the links to the collaborative documents within an easy to find place in your LMS.
Cited
University of Utah. (2019). Active learning. Center for Educational InnovationHuang, H.-M. (2002). Toward constructivism for adult learners in online learning environments. British Journal of Educational Technology, 33(1), 27–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8535.00236
Post author:Lenora Ott is an instructional designer in the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University. Lenora assists faculty with developing and launching their online courses and provides long term evaluation, redesign, and support for online coursework. Her passion is empowering faculty to create meaningful learning experiences for their students and themselves online. She has worked in higher education for 7 years and has a Master of Science in Global Technology and Development from Arizona State University and a Graduate Certificate in Educational Technology from Northern Arizona University.
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