This came up a few years back:
I was at a conference which had an excellent poster session. I realized the session would have been even better if the students with posters had been randomly assigned to stand next to and explain other students’ posters. Some of the benefits:
1. The process of reading a poster and learning about its material would be more fun if it was a collaborative effort with the presenter.
2. If you know that someone else will be presenting your poster, you’ll be motivated to make the poster more clear.
3. When presenting somebody else’s poster, you’ll learn the material. As the saying goes, the best way to learn a subject is to teach it.
4. The random assignment will lead to more inderdisciplinary understanding and, ultimately, collaboration.
I think just about all poster sessions should be done this way.
P.S. In reply to comments:
– David writes that my idea “misses the potential benefit to the owner of the poster of geting critical responses to their work.” The solution: instead of complete randomization, randomize the poster presenters into pairs, then put pairs next to each other. Student A can explain poster B, student B can explain poster A, and spectators can give their suggestions to the poster preparers.
– Mike writes that “one strong motivation for presenters is the opportunity to stand in front of you (and other members of the evaluation committee) and explain *their* work to you. Personally.” Sure, but I don’t think it’s bad if instead they’re explaining somebody else’s work. If I were a student, I think I’d enjoy explaining my fellow-students’ work to an outsider. The ensuing conversation might even result in some useful new ideas.
– Lawrence suggests that “the logic of your post apply to conference papers, too.” Maybe so.
I had this idea a while ago but never did anything with it, so I’m happy to see that Cosma Shalizi independently came up with the idea, tried it out, and it worked:
Some years ago, Henry Farrell and I [Shalizi] ran a series of workshops about cooperative problem-solving and collective cognition where we wanted to get people with very different disciplinary backgrounds . . . talking to each other productively. We hit upon an idea which worked much better than we had any right to hope. . . .
1. Every participant in the workshop writes a brief presentation, with enough lead time for the organizers to read them all. In the context of an inter-disciplinary workshop, what often works best is to describe an outstanding problem in the field.
2. The workshop organizers semi-randomly assign each participant’s presentation to someone else, with enough lead time that the assignee can study the presentation. Again, in the interdisciplinary context, the organizers try to make sure that there’s some hope of comprehension. (While I called this the “presentation exchange”, it needn’t be a strict swap, where A gets assignd B’s presentation and vice versa.)
3. Everyone gives the presentation they were assigned, followed by their own comments on what they found interesting / cool / provocative and what they found incomprehensible. No one gives the presentation they wrote. . . .
Doing this at the beginning of the workshop helps make sure that everyone has some comprehension of what everyone else is talking about, or at least that mis-apprehensions or failures to communicate are laid bare. It can help break up the inevitable disciplinary/personal cliques. It can, and has, spark actual collaborations across disciplines. And, finally, many people report that knowing their presentation is going to be given by someone else forces them to write with unusual clarity and awareness of their own expert blind-spots. . . .
I’ve also used it for disciplinary workshops — because every discipline is a fractal (or lattice) of sub-sub-…-sub-disciplinary specialization. I’ve also used it for student project classes, at both the undergrad and graduate level. . . .
I’m so happy to hear about this.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/randoimize
I may be wrong but I think you are repeatedly using ‘awhile’ incorrectly across different posts. Not exactly substantive feedback on the post…but it is bugging me! https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/awhile-usage
Jamie:
I wanna say, “That’s alright,” but instead I went in and fixed the mistake you noticed.
Appreciated!
Shalizi writes about ‘semi-random assignment’. What does that mean? Random assignment followed by non-random changes?
Yes. Or, really, in my case, “random assignment, which I override if I think the results would be really bad”. Think of it as rejection sampling, if you like.
Cosma:
We discuss a fun example of this sort of re-randomization in Bayesian Data Analysis. It’s the cows example on pp. 217-218 of the third edition.
Not exactly the same, but I have used a similar approach for prioritizing work of my industry department that supports multiple stakeholders. Each stakeholder (about 10) presents their top priorities. During the next round of discussion, individuals advocate for any project other than you own. Finally, the group agrees on the department priorities for the quarter.
Created interesting alliances, supported system wide thinking, and understanding of the problems facing other departments.
So should we just admit that poster have nothing to do with communicating scientific results; it is an educational exercise.
Mikhail:
You can “admit” whatever you want, but I would not agree to your statement that “posters have nothing to do with communicating scientific results.” If person A writes the poster and person B communicates it to person C, then the scientific results are still getting communicated! The idea is that person B puts in the effort to understand A’s poster well enough to communicate it. Also, your term “educational exercise.” Education is all about communication. Communicating scientific results is a form of education!
Yes, this format can enhance communication.
An important factor is that person A — especially if A is new to scientific communication — doesn’t understand what the naïve viewer C knows or doesn’t know. (New graduate students tend to be awful at this, assuming that everyone in their audience is an expert on the topic.) Person B, being semi-naïve themselves, makes the communication better by asking A for clarification and focusing the presentation on “what’s the back-story” and “why do I care about this,” which is what C really wants.
That said, I’ve never done this at a poster session. A colleague and I at our usual overview to prospective grad students, though, each present each other’s work. It’s fun!
Raghu:
Many years ago I went with my friend Rajeev to a poetry slam. We read each other’s poems. It was fun. It’s easier to ham it up if you’re reading somebody else’s work!
Zen Faulkes of the Better Posters blog may have a word to share here: https://betterposters.blogspot.com
Inviting Interactions is a good post under the “presentations” tag: https://betterposters.blogspot.com/2013/10/invitating-interaction.html
I see he even has a new book out.
Interesting; thanks for sharing.
Suppose the presenter whether rightly or wrongly thinks the poster is garbage?