After years of requiring terms papers in my Introductory Psychology classes, I was ready for a change. I had been reading about simulations, and increasingly came to view the term paper as an academic rather than a "real-world" assignment. Also, I wanted something that would be more of a participative effort rather than the individual effort of term papers. And finally, to be honest, it was partly due to boredom: "If I read one more term paper on Sigmund Freud, I'll scream!"

I asked myself: across all divisions of my discipline, whether academic or applied, what do professionals have in common? One answer is participation in scientific conferences. However, in quizzing my students, I found that few of them had any conception whatsoever of what goes on at such a conference. So, I decided to show them. For the past few years, in lieu of a term paper, my students have prepared and presented posters at mock scientific conferences.

I began with modest expectations. I thought people might enjoy the craftwork of creating posters and at least enjoy the snacks and refreshments I provided on conference night. After all, I thought, a five-page paper is a five page paper even if you increase the font size enough to make it a nine-page paper. But in the years since, I have been pleasantly surprised at how each mock conference has transformed my class writing assignment into an anticipated and enjoyable event.

What's a Poster?
Not that it was all smooth sailing. The first problem I encountered was that most of my students had never seen a scientific poster and had no idea what one looked like. Therefore, I borrowed a variety of posters left over from conference presentations and brought them to class. Instead of lecturing about them, I simply let students scrutinize them and discuss which ones they liked best. To my surprise, students had quite a discerning eye for quality and had no trouble identifying factors that contributed to a superior poster. Then, at the end of another class period, I took the students on an excursion around campus to hallway display cases where several excellent posters from conferences are on display. The students' consensus was that they now had a pretty good idea what was expected of them.

Rules
I was concerned that a few less industrious students might create a short paper with huge fonts, tack on graphics from magazines and the Internet, and pronounce their poster completed. Therefore, I provided a set of guidelines for the preparation of the poster, specifying sections, rules for graphics, the need for a variety of research sources, and the like.

Topics
Students fretted over topics for their posters. I provided a handout with examples of acceptable topics and set a deadline for topic approval, where I gently guided students who had chosen their topics too broadly. I also answered a steady stream of emails regarding research sources and methods.

The Secret Ingredient
On the night of the first conference, I stopped by the grocery store and bought ice, cups, soft drinks, bottled water, and a variety of snack chips and cookies. Students helped me lug these from my car to the classroom. I joked with students that we weren't quite a real scientific conference because we didn't have a cash bar!

Logistics
Students drew slips of paper from a hat---half of the slips were labeled "attendee" while the other half were labeled "presenter". The "presenters" set up their posters around the room (desks and masking tape come in handy to prop and secure posters without marring walls).

I began the conference by delivering a short keynote address, welcoming the participants to the conference and drawing attention to local tourist attractions (since all the students were locals, they got a kick out of this). Then the poster session began. During the first half of class, poster authors stood at their posters, explaining their research and answering questions from the attendees. Midway through class, we took a break and roles reversed, with attendees presenting their posters while the former presenters mingled.

Grading
The first time I held a poster session, I required students to leave their posters for grading. After struggling to my car with the third unwieldy (and heavy!) set of posters, I vowed to devise a way to grade posters on the spot during future poster sessions. This resolve was strengthened by an embarrassing incident. When I carried stacks of posters and put them in my car, bits and pieces tended to slough off. One student’s poster, on the topic of sexual paraphilias, contained strategically-blurred graphics from Internet fetish sites, along with their corresponding URLs. These flaked off the poster and promptly burrowed under my car seat. They emerged when I was driving colleagues to lunch, and I learned that the more you explain such things, the bigger a pervert you appear to be.

As a consequence, I constructed and distributed a simple rubric that required students to grade each other's posters. Each student grades every poster except his/her own. I told students that it's rude to grade in front of someone, so we constructed a "grading area" in the center of the classroom; after reading a poster and conversing with its author, students could retreat to the grading area to record their rankings.

At first I was skeptical regarding the reliability and validity of student grading, so students' rankings accounted for just half of the poster grade with my own ratings (vanity, thy name is professor!) making up the remainder. However, to my surprise, when I correlated students' rankings with my own I found that the grades were virtually identical---the only difference being that students tended to be somewhat harsher in their grading (evidently, when you put a lot of work into your own poster, you really resent "slackers" who slapped something together haphazardly). Now, students do all the grading, with my vote reserved to settle disputes and the threat of my vote used to prevent collusion toward universally high grades.

Paparazzo
I bring a digital camera to class and take pictures during the event, as well as a close-up picture of each poster before the mingling starts. I post these photos on the class web site to commemorate the event and serve as examples for future students. I teach students how to download pictures of their posters from the web site.

Benefits
Whether because of its novelty or the prospect of public display, students appear to put more effort into the conference assignment and say they have more opportunity to be creative (indeed, some of the posters are quite elaborate). I like that it combines a writing assignment with an oral presentation assignment and provides a reasonable simulation of a common and valued experience afforded to "real" scientists. The conference allows for prompt feedback: when we pack up and leave for the night, the grading is completed, and all that remains is for me to enter the ratings into a spreadsheet, average them, and collate mine and others' comments to send to each student via email. This means I can return grades and feedback to student in days instead of weeks.

Best of all, an ordinary writing assignment is transformed into a social event. At some point in every conference, I stop to listen, and the din of conversation in the room tells me that the session has taken on a life of its own.

Plans
I can't seem to stop myself from fiddling with the poster session. In subsequent terms, I’ve “cross-pollinated”--- another instructor, whose class meets at the same time as my class in an adjacent room, also held a poster session so we combined our two classes with my students serving as her attendees and vice versa. I now have attendees fill out a conference evaluation sheet, and next I plan to have students vote on "best of show" posters so we can hold a short award ceremony, bestowing certificates and small prizes.

Well, that's it. I hope you'll give it a try!

Bob