Posters should be in landscape layout. We recommend 36"x48" dimensions. Please NO glossy or laminated posters. Poster printing info for Oregon State University students is listed here. The recommended poster content is listed below (provided by Lisa Ganio):
Poster Content:
Title and Presenter – Include your name, email contact and major professor. If there are other significant collaborators please include them as well.
General Research Question or Objective: State the general question your research will address, and any specific objectives of your project.
Background – Briefly put your research into context with regards to current knowledge on the topic and the importance of your question.
Specific Questions and assumptions: State one or more specific questions to be addressed by the methods described below. These can be stated as postulates, succinct questions or hypotheses. – Note that these are NOT statistical hypotheses. State (non-null) scientific hypotheses. List the critical axioms or assumptions.
Methods – Describe the approach you propose to use to address each specific question – give your proposed response variable(s) and any explanatory variables, describe how the data are (or were) to be collected, study design (e.g., observational, survey, experiment), sampling plan and suggested analysis method. This is a minor part of the poster because it may not be well-developed at this point and it typically changes as the proposal evolves. But if you have ideas for it you should include them.
Interpretation – Provide the scope of inference – that is, identify the set or group to which the conclusions of your proposed research will apply. Provide the expected outcomes for your scientific hypotheses. Explain what types of data responses will lead to what types of answers to your questions.
Importance – Explain how your thesis work will provide a significant contribution to the body of knowledge in your field. This section can act as a summary to the poster. Sometimes the importance of the proposed work is included in the background section identified above.
We encourage you to check out this recorded talk by Dr. Jim Rivers (FES) on crafting an effective scientific presentation for additional tips.
Suggested Process:
- Discuss the proposed research with your major professor and make sure you are in agreement with regards to the specific questions, assumptions, methods and interpretation.
- Develop a rough draft of your poster (reduced scale) and have it reviewed by your major professor and others who might provide useful feedback.
- Print a draft color copy of the final poster on 11x17 paper before producing a full scale version. Have this reviewed by fellow students.
- Go to Student Multimedia Services (Valley Library, 2nd floor) to produce the final version: http://is.oregonstate.edu/service/large-format-poster-production
- DO NOT PROCRASTINATE! Leave plenty of time to work out the wrinkles. Note the time to produce the poster that the Student Media Services requires as well.