Information for Presenters

Instructions for Oral Presenters

All oral sessions will be held in Microsoft Teams Live Events (you will be provided a link to your session in early May). Talks will be 12 min with 3 minutes for questions. Moderators will enforce time limits, so please practice your talk to ensure that you can finish within the time allotted. Your presentations can be prepared in PowerPoint, Google Doc, Keynote, or other presentation software.

Each student will present the talk from their own computer. If multiple students are presenting a talk together, decide who will control the slide show, and practice how you will signal to advance the slide.

In addition to enforcing time limits, the faculty moderator for each session will relay any questions to the presenters.

Instructions for Poster Presenters

Format: PowerPoint is the easiest software to use for poster layout, but you are free to use other graphic design software as desired. Be sure to select a font and font size that is appropriate for reading at arms' length.

Size: The typical poster size is 36" by 24" (3 ft x 2 ft), but these dimensions can be adjusted as necessary.

  • In PowerPoint for Windows, select the “Custom” option of the “Slide Size” function under the “Design” tab and enter the desired size for you poster.
  • In PowerPoint for Macintosh, select Page Setup from the File Menu. For the "Slides sized for:" option, select "Custom". Enter the desired width and length in the boxes indicated. Double-sheck that the correct slide orientation is selected.

Need inspiration? Three good websites for designing posters are: How To Design an Award-Winning Conference Poster, Creating Effective Poster Presentations and Poster Presentation tips

Elevator Pitch: Record a brief (max. of 3 minutes) audio tour of your poster, emphasizing the big-picture question, essential background, your experimental approach, and your key findings. Your recording should be saved in .mp4 format. The links below are helpful tutorials written for other online conferences, and describe how to create recordings in PowerPoint, Zoom and other software:

Uploading poster files: files should be uploaded by 11:59 PM on Tuesday, May 4, 2021

  1. Save your poster file as a PDF (Mac: "Save As PDF"; Windows: "Print to PDF")
  2. Title your poster file SPU_Erickson_(your last name).pdf
  3. Title your poster tour recording SPU_Erickson_(your last name).mp4
  4. Upload both your poster file and recording to the OneDrive folder set up for the Erickson conference (you will need to log in with your SPU account).

    5. Poster session: Poster files will be available to faculty judges and the public for 48 hours prior to the start of the conference. During the poster session, each group of presenters will be assigned a room in Microsoft Teams, and will have the opportunity to answer questions and provide more detailed discussions of your poster files.