Creating a Science Poster Using PowerPoint. What is a Scientific Poster? A visually coherent means of presenting research Images, rather than text,

Creating a Science Poster

Using PowerPoint

What is a Scientific Poster?

A visually coherent means of presenting research

Images, rather than text, should dominate a poster

The poster must follow the standardized format for presenting scientific research including: title, abstract, objective, introduction, results, discussion, conclusion, references and acknowledgements.

Example

Working in Groups

Meet early on in the process and sketch out common goals

Make each group member accountable for a specific task

Establish a space where you can share ideas, research, work-in-progress, findings, etc.

Before You Get Started

Sketch your plans first Lay-outFocus

Don't forget … Design PrinciplesMake every mark count

Creating Your Poster

To build your poster, open PowerPoint and when prompted to create a new slide presentation, at the new slide screen, choose a blank slide.

This blank slide will serve as your canvas, i.e. as your main poster board. You will have only this one slide so everything that you usually do on all slides in a PowerPoint presentation, you will do on this one slide.

Re-sizing Your Poster

Next, you must format the blank slide to meet the dimensions required for a poster. To do this, go to File>Page Setup> choose Custom under the “slides sized for” heading and set the size guides to 42” wide by 36”high.

Sections of the Poster

All posters must follow standard scientific presentation

You do not necessarily have to write out your methods if you instead use an illustration.

Also, a poster is not necessarily a book so you do not have to arrange the sections in a manner which corresponds to an expected book order.

This is the Title of Your PresentationJane Q. Citizen, Hunter College, CUNY Honors College

Introduction and ObjectivesLay in your introduction

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Population Studiedx

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Methodology

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1st Qtr 2nd Qtr 3rd Qtr 4th Qtr

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Study conclusions and ideas for new research

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x

Discussions

xxxxx

Funding Source

Poster Text

Inserting a textbox

Font Size: 18 (1/2 inch)

Font style: Arial or Times

Bold headings and sub-headings whenever possible …

Acknowledgements or references < 18 font

Be succinct …Do not use too much text!!!Make every word countShoot for short, concise sentences that are well illustrated.

As well, any legends for maps or graphics need to be short and readable.

Image Format

Save all photos as high resolution images (at least 300dots per inch (dpi), as tif or Jpg images.

You will have to play around with quality and file size so that they will print clearly on the final poster (you are essentially blowing these photos up so the quality will degrade substantially).

Poster handout

• It is very effective to also create a one-sheet paper handout that includes key points, sources, annotations and contact information.

• When you hand this to interested viewers of your poster, they can take away the core story of your work.

If you do create such a handout it should be created as professionally and effectively as your poster, and is best produced on high-quality paper.

Printing Your Poster

Where: ?When: Allow for at least a week when printing your poster

Be sure you carefully proofread the sample

Avoid strange fonts and symbols