Disseminating Academic Research

With a growing number of conferences including poster presentations within their programmes, research posters are an increasingly popular way for scholars from a range of academic disciplines to disseminate their research. When presented in an effective visual format, the academic research poster has the potential to draw interested parties to engage directly with the work under consideration, creating a platform for informal academic discourse between researcher and delegate. Hence communication of research in this way is a powerful method for scholars to share and gain perspectives on their work in real time. Typically, an academic poster is a combination of text, charts, and images, with the most effective academic posters being those that summarise the important aspects of the research concisely, and that present findings in a visually stimulating way, one that is both easy to read and understand. However often, because of poor design practices, ideas and concepts are not always conveyed successfully and as a result opportunities for effective dissemination are reduced or lost. Considering the formal elements of design, and software, printing, copyright and permissions, irrespective of the academic discipline, this poster is designed to facilitate researchers with basic design knowledge which they can use as a tool to support and guide them in their ability to produce visually appealing academic research posters. Dawne Irving-Bell Centre for Learning and Teaching