Year 3 IT workshop / preparation for poster presentation. Professor Martin Wills. C504, 23260.

1. Year 3 IT workshop / preparation for poster presentation. Professor Martin Wills. C504, 23260. Contents; i) General information about poster presentations. Where, why, when? ii) Three key issues: Content – presentation – understanding. iii) Technical features of a good poster - text size, diagrams, colour. iv) Finding information. v) Poster structure, layout, preparation, printing.

2. In detail: i) General information. If you have chosen extended laboratory (CH3C6) then you are required to attend a workshop on ‘IT skills’. The objective of this is to provide advice and experience on effective visual presentation of your own work or of a subject area. This will be useful for those who are required to give a poster presentation, on a recent research area, as a component of CH3C6. However it will also be of use to anyone writing up a laboratory report. We’re not teaching you how to use powerpoint etc. – you probably know how to do that already. The IT workshop lasts 2 hours maximum, and is assessed by the completion of a simple task (see end of handout). Further details of the poster presentation and the associated timing will be provided separately (this is organised by Dr Stefan Bon).

3. ii) Three key issues: Content – Presentation – Understanding. In order to prepare a poster, you will be required to search several literature sources, i.e. Books, Scientific Journals, Web-based material, Scifinder (Chemical Abstracts Online) etc. for information. Your supervisor will guide you in your choice of material for the poster. During the poster session, you will be asked questions about the content by two markers. For maximum marks, you should score highly in the following areas:

4. Content; The poster has to contain a detailed yet concise summary of a specific area of recent research work. Finding and organising this will require a reasonable amount of research work. Scientists (i.e. the people marking you) usually like to see hard, corroborated, data and facts, rather than (extensive) speculation. e.g. “The study by Armstrong and co-workers1 resulted in a total synthesis of Penicillin that was two steps short than the existing method, gave a product in 85% yield (previously the best was 75%) and avoided the need for the use of hazardous organotin compounds. Since its publication, 3 other research groups2-4 have adopted this approach.” Reference 1: Armstrong, A.; Smith, P.; Williams, J. M. J. J. Org. Chem. 2008, 86, 8127-8138. * (then add references 2-4 in the same style). Is better than: “The synthesis by Armstrong and co-workers1 is much better in many ways, and other people have also used this approach”. (* This is a real journal but the citation is fictional) GOOD: BAD

5. Presentation The poster should look good, with appropriate use of colour and diagrams, photos etc. without going ‘over the top’. - structured in a way that highlights the key points you wish to make. Diagrams should be of good quality and consistent in format, font size etc. GOOD: Reaction under study: ‘Teth-NH’ catalyst ‘Teth-NMe’ catalyst

6. TOO BUSY?: OVERALL Tethered catalysts now being commercialised by Johnson Matthey.

7. BAD

8. Understanding You will be asked about the work described in your poster and you would be expected to know about ... The background to the work, what similar work had been carried out prior to this, and by which researchers, at which Universities? Why it was carried out – to improve or replace a process, to do something that couldn’t previously be done, to study a mechanism or process in detail? Who else is working in this area? What were the key results and what would be a likely future direction of the research, what hasn’t been solved? Don’t prepare a long presentation on the work, but be prepared to talk for 2-3 minutes about it. You may be asked about any the source of papers that you have cited

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12. iii) Features of a good poster - text size, diagrams, colour. A good poster should contain a balanced combination of text, diagrams and pictures, together with the title, names of presenters, references and credits to anyone who assisted you. The exact balance should be appropriate to the content; for example a poster describing a total synthesis would have more diagrams (i.e. created by you) but fewer pictures/photos than a poster describing results obtained using some form of microscopy.

13. Here are a few things to consider: • keep text fonts relatively consistent, and of a size appropriate to their relevance. For example, the title would normally be larger than the rest of the text, but don’t have too big a contrast. • This is the heading. • This is the text size. Etc. • Looks better than • This is the heading. • This is the text size etc

14. Don’t make the text too small, or too big. Reading a poster about 1-1.5m away, arial font, size 14 is about as small as you can reasonably get the font. • Can you read this (arial 8)? • Can you read this (arial 10)? • Can you read this (arial 12)? • Can you read this (arial 14)? • Can you read this (arial 16)? • Can you read this (arial 18)? • Can you read this (arial 20)? • Can you read this (arial 24)? • From 1 metre away?

15. Keep diagrams of chemical structures proportional with consistent font size and bond lengths etc. • See example paper. Chemical structures: Proportional font/bond lengths:

17. Obviously imported diagrams: Can look OK: But can look terrible if you manipulate them: • Don’t blow up small pictures. Avoid resizing diagrams or schemes, as this will make the font sizes etc different. Get the size correct first (e.g in chemdraw), then import them at 100% size.

18. References, Plagiarism and Poor Scholarship. • Include a note of the source of any diagrams taken from the web or other sources, and reference these in the poster. • But don’t make your poster entirely out of downloaded materials (even it you cite them all) because this will be poor scholarship, and you won’t get a good mark. • Include references to the source of your material; • about 10-12 is good, 3 is too few, 50 is too many! • Web links require a date at which they were sampled. • ‘Proper’ journals are much better sources, because journals are ‘forever’. • Use a consistent style e.g. • RSC style: T. C. Johnson, W. G. Totty and M. Wills, Org. Lett. 2012, 14, 5230–5233. • ACS style: Johnson, T. C.; Totty, W. G.; Wills, M. Org. Lett. 2012, 14, 5230-5233. • Note – journal abbreviation (usually in italics), year, volume number, page range. • Standard journal abbreviations - http://chemlab.truman.edu/chemlab_backup/labreports_files/journals.htm

19. iv) Finding information. • Wherever you can: Online, books, Scifinder, Journals, etc. be guided by your supervisor. • v) Poster structure, layout, preparation, printing. • The following steps may assist you: • First meet with your supervisor and make sure that you understand exactly what area the poster work is supposed to be in. • Spend a bit of time finding the information on your area before even starting to think about the layout. 10-12 good references (particularly to reviews) will give you plenty of material to fill an A1 poster.

20. When you have the material, think about the %age of space you’d like to give to each part of it. For example, you might allocate 30% to the background, 40% to the results and 20% about future work, with 10% for credits and references. You might decide to have a 50:50 split between text and diagrams, or perhaps a different ratio depending on the material you have found. Title Title/authors Title/authors Back-ground result Background Results Results Results Results Conclusions Conclusions references Results refs acknowledgements

21. When you do the poster for the poster presentation event: • Set up a single page in powerpoint with the dimensions of an A1 page, and simply write the poster in it. • Allow time to print the poster – print a small cheap A4 version first! The A1 posters take ca 15 mins to print, • so don’t be in a queue of 35 people at 10pm the night before the presentation!

22. Short presentation task for completion of workshop: Aim: Prepare a single Powerpoint slide (A4 size) which would be suitable as a poster (we won’t print them out). Submission: Email it to m.wills@warwick.ac.uk Deadline: Complete it during the workshop.