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Overview

The purpose of a global engagement poster is to summarize your study abroad experience for an audience unfamiliar with the country you visited. To be effective, the poster should be visually appealing and stand out from others, capturing the audience's attention quickly. Compelling visuals are essential for effectively communicating your experience, as viewers typically decide within seconds whether to engage with the poster.

Below are recommendations for creating posters for both Virginia Wesleyan's Academic Symposium and off-campus academic conferences. These instructions are intended to be interdisciplinary, and therefore, they might have to be modified for specific disciplines or projects.

Technical Considerations

• Program: All posters should be designed in PowerPoint. A paper poster should be designed as a single PowerPoint slide.
• Set-Up for Printed Posters: To be printed by VWU, posters must follow specific design parameters. The PAGE SETUP (which is located under DESIGN in PowerPoint) should be set as follows:
  • Height= 24"
  • Width= 36" to 48"
• Set-Up for E-posters:
  •  40.97x23.04 (16:9 aspect ratio)
  • You may include images, graphs, videos

Content

Content should be of high quality and follow professional and disciplinary standards.

Posters should include the following content sections:

1. Project Title. The title should clearly communicate the theme of your poster. While it's appropriate to incorporate disciplinary language into the title, viewers should be able to read the title and understand the message you are attempting to convey.
2. Information. Include your name, where you studied away, and the term(s) in which you traveled. If applicable, include the course rubric and number, the course title, and instructor(s). 
3. Abstract. The abstract should provide a brief summary of where you traveled and learned during your time abroad. The abstract should be written out in full sentences (i.e., not bulleted).
4. Introduction. Use this section to introduce the audience to the country in which you studied abroad. Provide details and facts about the country.
5. Learning Objectives. Outline 2-5 learning objectives you had planned to achieve during your time abroad.
6. Description. This section should detail your time spent abroad, highlighting any activities or events you took part in.
7. Discussion. The discussion section should describe what you learned during your time abroad and how immersing yourself in the culture has impacted you.
8. Works Cited. If applicable, this section should include a full list of any research you performed that contributed to your poster. Citations should be formatted according to disciplinary conventions.
9. Acknowledgements. Recognize the people who helped you, including the course instructor and mentors. Include full titles in the acknowledgements. In addition, acknowledge any funding sources you received.
10. Visuals. Incorporate visual aids to illustrate key points. Be sure to label all visuals. Include: names, dates, locations, photographers, and citations.
11. VWU Logo. Recognize Òùµ´ÉÙ¸¾ as the institution which provided the study away experience by including the VWU logo.

Recommendations for Text

The text should communicate ideas clearly and succinctly. While the poster should include the above content items, it's also important to limit the amount of text, as few people will read a poster that contains mostly text.

1. Avoid long sentences.
2. Use the active voice.
3. Additional information may be distributed as a supplemental handout during the Academic Symposium poster session.

Design

Posters should follow specific design parameters to make them visually interesting and effective. Here are some guidelines:

1. Margins: Avoid putting content elements at the margins of the PowerPoint slide because these might get cut off in the printing process. In other words, leave large margins on the slide.
2. Clearly Define Content Sections. Place key content is separate sections that are visually separated from other content sections. Each section should include a clear title that explains what the section does.
3. Blank Spaces. Include ample blank spaces that set off content sections. If the poster contains too much content (especially text), the viewer might feel overwhelmed and thus be reluctant to read the poster.
4. Poster Coherence. To enable the viewer to read the poster with relative ease and to understand the relationship between its sections, the poster should contain visual coherence. In particular, related content sections should be visually aligned in such a manner that they flow from one main point to the next. This provides a visual path for the audience to follow. Graphic hierarchy (e.g., larger to smaller font and color coding) also helps the viewer to interpret the project's significance quickly.
5. Background Color: The background should be light colored (but not necessarily white). If you use other colors, make sure that they are a lighter shade of that color. Gradient coloring looks good. Avoid red for the background.
6. Section Background Colors: Posters that include different background colors for sections/elements look good and help the audience to follow the content sections. However, be mindful that the poster does not include too many competing colors.
7. Background Images: In most cases, posters should not include background images, as they tend to compete with the content and make the poster look busy.
8. Font Sizes: Posters should use a variety of font sizes to draw more/less attention to certain elements on the poster. The largest fonts should be reserved for the project's title, the section titles, and the abstract. The minimum setting for the font size is 24 point; however, the font sizes generally should be larger than 24 point.
9. Font Color: The font color should be dark. This sets the font off from the light-colored background.
10. Presentation of Text: Bullet most of the text to make information easy to read (although the abstract should be written out in complete sentences).

Samples