Years before PC had a poster machine, Tim Gaines in the Psychology Department used posters in "Experimental Study of Behavior" as a rough draft and a vehicle for peer response. He began the poster project "because the Southeastern Psychological Association always has a student poster session at the annual meeting and because we often have students presenting their senior research at that session."

Poster Project
Two and a half weeks before the final drafts of their lab reports are due, students give each other feedback on posters presenting their research projects. Over several days after teams of two or three students present their research using the posters as visual aids, "each person in the class first evaluates and then ranks three posters as first, second, or third," according to Gaines. "I know that students tend to be very kind in their ratings, so I require the rankings as well, and I require comments when they give a rating higher or lower than three to any section of the report."

He evaluates their ratings and rankings as unsatisfactory, satisfactory, or exemplary. "I emphasize that their comments should be directed at helping their classmates compose better papers," Gaines said, "and the rankings allow students to see how they compare with their peers."

Peer Evaluation
Students evaluate the poster on the following scale:
1 low rating indicating an obvious deficiency
2 somewhat low rating indicating one or more minor problems
3 average rating indicating satisfactory but not exemplary work
4 somewhat high rating indicating generally good work
5 high rating indicating superior work

Gaines also provides students with specific features to consider in their comments to help their fellow students write the final paper:

Title and Abstract: Is the title descriptive of the study? Does the abstract contain a clear but brief description of the problem investigated, the general method employed, the results obtained, and some interpretation of the implications?

Introduction: Is there a description of the general topic, a description of earlier work on the topic from the literature, and finally a clear description of the specific problem being studied?

Method: Is the method described clearly enough to determine what kind of subjects were employed, what was done, and whether relevant variables were controlled?

Results: Is it clear what was found? Are the results presented appropriately (tabled or graphed when necessary)?

Discussion: If the results did not conform to expectations, is there discussion of why that may have happened? Are the implications of the results stated, particularly with regard to the problem stated in the introduction?

Student Reactions
For junior Laura Michael, "creating the poster took off the pressure of having to write a complete lab report at once, instead making it easier to focus on the individual parts. It was not difficult finishing the lab report after putting so much work and thought into the poster." She found the suggestions
from her fellow students helpful and constructive in
revising the writing and completing the final draft.

Besides the valuable feedback on their papers, the poster project has another advantage shared with other early drafts: "I know I would have procrastinated if I hadn't done this," said junior Katie Fite.

Faculty Use of Peer Response
Assessment experts Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson in Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment recommend peer response to help make grading time-efficient; however, according to a 2003 survey, only 35% of PC faculty use it. Those professors who did not try peer review mentioned various reasons: time constraints, concerns with how capable students are for the task, or ethics.

Gaines and his students have found one effective way to overcome those concerns and make peer review a valuable part of the writing process. Drop by to see the posters which remain on display in Harrington-Peachtree 100 as examples to students in the next semester's class.

The Poster Machine

Allison Tebbe, a senior psychology major, tried the Media Center's new poster machine in creating her poster for "Experimental Study of Behavior." Having seen posters like these elsewhere, Tebbe was excited to find out that PC had a machine. She and lab partner Katie Fite first made a PowerPoint slide, one of many documents the poster machine accepts. She found creating the poster with the machine more fun than constructing a traditional cut-and-paste poster. She and Fite presented their experiment entitled "The Effect of Altering Perception-View on Egocentric Encoding on the Muller-Lyer Illusion" with a poster featuring text boxes containing the abstract, introduction, hypothesis, method, results, and conclusion. Figures, tables, and photos of the experiment in progress added to their colorful finished product. "The hard part of doing the poster printout," Tebbe said, "was that we were the first ones [in our class] to do it, and we weren't exactly sure how it would turn out. The poster didn't print exactly like the PowerPoint we made. The lab report sections on the poster seemed too small when we saw the whole thing and the light green on the PowerPoint background ended up printing neon green." However, Tebbe and Fite were very happy overall with the results.

Jill Frey

Helpful Web sites for students preparing posters:

Hess, George and Leon Liegel. "Creating Effective Poster Presentations." http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters

Tham, Ming. "Poster Presentation of Research Work." http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/Dept/Tips/
present/posters.htm