Posters are often used to share information in conferences, seminars and exhibitions. In fact, in some occasions such as academic conferences, presentations with posters might be preferred over those with PowerPoint slides, as posters are not only informative and visually appealing, but also capable of displaying all the findings at one glance, making it easier for the audience to revisit a talked-about section. Since posters are usually loaded with a lot of information, materials, graphics and data, it is essential for poster creators to make sure that the content of the posters is well laid out, legible and easily comprehensible.

However, despite many of you may already know the way to create effective PowerPoint slides, how to prepare and present a poster academically may remain to be an unexplored territory. This is the reason why the current website is constructed—as you browse through different pages on this website, you will acquire the skills and techniques to design a good academic poster with reference to its genre features. In the meantime, through various texts, samples and videos, you will learn the way to write the script for your poster presentation, to use your voice and tone to engage the audience, and many more. This website will even help you test your knowledge acquired with the help of interactive quizzes and analytical exercises!

When you know how to design and present an academic poster appropriately and effectively, it becomes several times easier for you to share important information and findings with a wide range of audience. This is why the knowledge and skills that you acquire through this website will be beneficial not only during your years at university, but also after your graduation.

Objectives

This website has been put together to:

• help you discover the skills in research presentation;
• guide you to analyze the semiotic, structural, sentential, lexical features of poster presentations, either at your own pace (outside the classroom) or under your teachers’ supervision (inside the classroom);
• raise your awareness of poster presentation as a spoken academic genre;
• enhance your ability in analyzing and examining genre features;
• serve as a highly accessible teaching and learning tool for those of you who are involved in courses about poster presentation and analysis of genre features, e.g. GE1401 (University English) or GE2412 (English for the Humanities and Social Sciences).

How to use this website

You may first visit the “Genre” section to get a basic understanding of the concept “genre”. You may then move on to the “Academic Poster” section where you will find a lot of information about the nature and multimodal features of academic poster with samples for you as references. Meanwhile, in the “Poster Presentation” section, you will find loads of resources about the structural, sentential, and lexical features of poster presentations, plus scripts and video samples showing you exactly the way to compose a good script and do a poster presentation effectively. Afterwards, you may test your knowledge in the “Small Quizzes” section, and learn how to analyze the features of academic posters/presentations in the “Analysis” part. Lastly, if you are interested in getting more information about academic poster and presentation, you may refer to the list of resources under “Further Readings”.