A Guide to Presenting at the EXPO

Integrating Visuals and Speech

At the Research & Creative Inquiry EXPO, you’ll represent your work by showing and speaking about a visual component such as a poster, a website, or a physical object. The best way to prepare for your presentation is to think about how your visuals work together with your speech. 

For example, some posters—particularly in the Natural Sciences and Psychology—include an overview of an entire research experience, with lots of words and graphs. In those cases, the audience will need the presenter to highlight the most important components of the poster in a logical sequence. But some posters—often in the Arts and Humanities—may serve as little more than a teaser for the presenter’s verbal description of their project. A physical object may require the presenter to tell a more complete story while demonstrating the object’s functions and features. 

All of these approaches are valid! The key is to make purposeful choices that best represent your particular work within its disciplinary expectations. Some questions to ask yourself:

  • Does my discipline have a clear tradition or expectation for a poster presentation? If so, what’s non-negotiable and what’s up to me to decide? 
  • How can I best meet the audience’s needs to understand my work in just a few minutes? What’s most important to overview? 
  • If someone is really interested and hangs around a while, how will I elaborate on my overview? 
  • What questions do you anticipate your audience—faculty from both within and outside your discipline, College administrators, undergraduate and graduate students—will ask you? 

Visuals: Using Model Posters

The EXPO website includes a portfolio of model posters created by past presenters. We’ve annotated them to identify the posters’ strengths, contextualize them, and help you start thinking about how you can draw on these examples. As you review the models, ask yourself the questions above. Try to imagine what these presenters needed to do in speaking with their audiences to effectively communicate about their projects. What questions do the posters raise? Which of these questions do they answer on their own?

Speech: A Quick Thesis

No matter what visual representation you choose, you’ll need to be able to describe your work succinctly, emphasizing its framework and outcomes. The template below can help you isolate the key features of your project and begin to sequence them in a purposeful description. Try jotting down answers, and then using them as talking points for developing a quick thesis—something you can say in just a minute or so. It will probably take a few rounds of revision or practicing with a friend to get your quick thesis refined.

You might also find it helpful to watch other student researchers presenting their work in a quick thesis format. The Three Minute Thesis—though longer than you’ll want to aim for—asks PhD candidates to present their work in, well, three minutes. To learn more, and watch video clips of winners from all over the world, visit threeminutethesis.org.

I studied/created…(your narrow topic) 

as represented by…(your primary data, evidence, case study)

to find out…(your research question)

because…(the motivation for your project)

I found out…(your results, discoveries, arguments)

which is important because…(your project’s larger significance)

Remember…

The EXPO is, first and foremost, a celebration. We want you to enjoy sharing your experiences and what you’ve learned from them. Every guest will be there because they believe undergraduate scholarship and creative endeavors matter, and they’ll all be rooting for you to succeed, so smile, and have fun! 

If you’d like a little more help beforehand, we’re here to support you—just email us at [email protected].