1. PREPARING
ABSTRACTS &
PRESENTING PAPERS
AND POSTERS AT
CONFERENCES
RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT DAY 23RD
NOVEMBER 2011
Dr Siân Lindsay, Learning Development
Centre

2. Today‟s session
 Finding out and choosing your conference
 Looking at a conference call
 How to write and submit a conference abstract
 Activity
 Dealing with feedback on your submission
 Preparing, designing and delivering your
presentation
 Some tips for poster presentations

3. Are you planning to submit an
abstract to a conference...
1. Yes, in the next
17% 17% 17% 17% 17% 17%
month
2. Yes, in the next 1-
3 months
3. Yes, after 3
months time
4. Yes eventually but
not just yet
5. Really not sure
6. Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 6

4. How can I find out about upcoming
conferences?
 Advice from your supervisor(s)
 Advice from your peers and colleagues at City and
elsewhere
 Conference proceedings that you have come across
 Some journals have an associated conference
 Conference calls advertised online, in magazines,
newspapers
 Mailing lists
 Societies, Publishers, Funding Councils in your
interested fields (e.g. IEEE, SRHE, Welcome)
normally publish a conference calendar which you can
view online
 You might have attended the conference previously

5. Choosing your conference
 What is the size of
the conference?
 What sort of
audience?
 What options for
presenting are
there?
 What facilities are
there?
 Will you present on
your own?

6. Analysing an example Conference
Call

9. How to submit an abstract
As well as addressing the conference
themes, you also need to consider:
1. What is the deadline for abstract submission?
2. How do you submit? Usually it is online
submission website, but some conferences
ask for emailed submissions. Hardly any
require paper submissions nowadays.
3. How much detail do they want? Word count?
4. When will you hear?

11. What is a conference abstract?
 Written summary of a paper or poster that you
intend to present
 But distilling all your research into a few
hundred words is not easy!
“If you want a 10 min summary, I can have it
for you a week from today; if you want it to be
30 minutes, I can do it tomorrow; if you want a
whole hour, I’m ready now” (Pierson, 2004 p.
1207)

12. How to write a good abstract
 Make your title: dynamic and informative, not descriptive and boring, and
avoid being too obscure
 Break your abstract into 4 parts, like this:
 Introduction – give brief background and rationale for your study, clearly
state your research question and/or hypothesis
 Methods – very briefly how did you get your results? What approach did
you take?
 Results – clearly give the main findings that relate to your research
question (sometimes these can be pending). Do not give speculations or
opinions, just the actual data.
 Discussion - present any conclusions based on your findings so far.
 Clearly link to one or more of the conference research strands (in either your
Introduction or Discussion sections)
 Write the abstract in the past tense, try not to mix tenses
 Provide all the references you refer to – use a consistent and recognised
referencing style Coad and Devitt (2006)
 Spell check!!! Alexandrov and Hennerici
(2007)
 Explain abbreviations

13. ACTIVITY
 In pairs write an
abstract of your own
for the SRHE Newer
Researchers
conference based on
one of two conference
posters.
 After 10 mins, swap
your ideas with
another pair, read for
5 mins and give each
other feedback.

14. After the submission comes the
feedback...
 Usually reviewed by 2 reviewers, final decision
by conference committee
 Were you successful? – great! Start
preparing...
 If you were rejected:
 You should receive reviewers comments to find
out why (or you can request these)
 Reviewers comments should help you learn from
the experience
 Comments may be harsh – but don‟t be put off –
keep trying!

15. What makes a bad
presentation?

16. What makes a good
presentation?

17. How to make good presentations
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC4BDmDG
_N4&feature=channel

18. Preparation
1. Where will you be presenting? (check out
room) What time?
2. Who is your session chair? (talk to them
before, if possible negotiate timings)
3. How long are you to present for? How much
time is set aside for your talk and how much
for questions?
4. What about AV provision? Presentation on
USB stick or email through beforehand (or
both) ?

19. Structure
Tell them what you are going
to tell them
Main point – summary
Intro
Main point – summary
Tell them;
Main point – summary
Tell them what you’ve told
them Conclusion

20. Structure
Opening line…
Stories,
artefacts
…closing line.
Your contact details,
socialise and
network!

21. Emulate a
presenter
you admire
Have
confidence in Try and
yourself – relax, take
you are here deep breaths
for a reason
Dealing with
Presentation
nerves
If you make a Rehearse
mistake don‟t and keep to
dwell on it time, practice
(no-one will makes
notice) perfect
Have some
questions for
the audience

22. An Example of a Bad Slide
 Poor choice of font style
 Font size difficult to read
 Background too busy
 Animation quite frustrating and detracts attention!

23. Richard Hake’s 1997 study
 In 1997 Richard Hake published some
results in a paper entitled “Interactive-
engagement versus traditional methods: A
six-thousand-student survey of mechanics
test data for introductory physics courses”
 Test results from 6000 Physics students from
High School (HS), College and University
were sampled
 At the start all students had to sit a standard
test (called a Force Concept Inventory) – this
was a pre-test. They were then tested again
after a period of time where some were
taught using traditional means of
lecturing, others using interactive
engagement with techniques such as the
Classroom Clickers.
 Here you see the normalised results of the
pre-test plotted against the gain in knowledge
following teaching using traditional or
interactive engagement techniques.
 Significant higher gains in knowledge are
seen with students who are tested having
been taught using interactive engagement –
and this is across the board
 This is perhaps the most convincing research
to date that supports the use of „teaching by
questioning‟ because of its large and varied

24. Clip-Art overload!
 A picture is worth a
thousand words…
 Great for Visual learners
 Approximately 70% of
information is retained
visually
 Choose visual aids
carefully – use them to
explain or reinforce, not
decorate!

25. Preparing Posters: Do‟s and
Don‟ts
DO DON’T
 Keep it brief and  Assume that people
simple will read your poster
 Retain any white – you will have to
space talk it through
 Get feedback on  Have blocks of text
design (on-screen longer than 10 lines
and printed)  Use too small a font
 Use images as size
much as possible
Designing Conference Posters:
http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterdesign

26. Taking Questions
• Repeat them back
• Give straight answer, be honest
• Consider collecting questions (ask Chair)
• Get audience to answer
• Follow up after the session

27. References
 Coad, J. and Devitt, P. (2006) The art of writing
an abstract for conferences Nurse Education
in Practice 6: 112 – 116
 Alexandrov, A, V. and Hennerici, M. G. (2007)
Writing Good Practices Cerebrovascular
Diseases 23: 256 – 259