English poster

PROJECT 2: POSTER REPORT O VE R VIE W

For your next project, you will take the research you completed with your group in the annotated

bibliography and create an informative poster. This poster should give a general academic audience

a good sense of what your chosen topic is about, including whom it affects, in what ways, and why

it’s important.

o This is an INDIVIDUAL project.

o It is worth 15% of your grade.

o We will have peer workshop during week seven.

o Your final draft is due Monday, October 11th.

P UR P OSE

The purpose of your poster report is:

o To inform the CSU community about a topic related to sustainability

o To effectively utilize the research that you conducted in your annotated bibliography to

support your claims

o To explain why this issue is exigent

AUDIE NC E

Your audience for this poster is your peers in the class, your instructor, and the CSU community.

o This is largely an academic community, but they are not familiar with your topic.

o Remember that the CSU community is quite diverse and can include multiple experiences.

They could include students, faculty, administration, facilities management, financial aid,

housing & dining, etc. It might be best to choose one of those groups as the target of your

poster.

o Your audience will expect accurate attribution (including in-text citations and a Works Cited

section) and use of outside sources.

G E NR E

The genre for this assignment is an informational academic poster. A poster is typically split into

sections such as:

o Introduction – explain what topic you are going to discuss. Here, you can provide definitions

of important terms to situate your discussion within a specific academic discourse

community. You can also include your (revised) research questions in this section to give

your audience an idea of your research process and what your inquiry was attempting to

address.

o Methodology – explain your research process. What search terms did you use? What kind of

sources did you find? Why did you choose those sources? What kind of research is including

in those sources?

o Results – Here, you will rely on your outside sources to explain the issue and talk about

current research being conducted. This could also include the context or background – who

is affected? In what ways? How many people are affected?

o Conclusion – Why should the audience should care? Think of this as an attempt to show

your audience the implications of the issue. Think specifically about the CSU community,

since they are your audience!

o Works Cited

Posters also contain multimodal elements. All multimodal elements need to be used with

intention and meaning. They should contribute to either grabbing your audience’s attention, or

relaying data in an easy-to-read format. These elements could include:

o Colors

o Images

o Charts

o Graphs

o Organization/layout of information

R E Q UIR EM E NTS

All posters should include:

o Outside sources

o You should use at least four sources, and those sources should come from the

annotated bibliography you created with your group. If you need additional

information, you can use up to two more sources that were not included in the

group’s AB.

o All sources need to be cited in MLA style. This includes both in-text citations and a

Works Cited section.

o If you use an image from a source that is not open-access, that must be cited! Please

visit the Purdue OWL for information on citing images. See the sample poster for

more info on open-access images.

o A clear statement of the topic you are reporting. While you won’t have a thesis statement

(since this is NOT an argument), you should be very clear with your audience about the

narrow, focused topic you are reporting on.

o These posters are typically large (36”x42”) and show a large amount of information.

o Word count:

o A good guideline is to have around 300-400 words per poster section. Too much

text will be small, hard to read, and lose your audience’s interest. You may need to

be concise. However, if you have to make your font large to take up space, you

probably haven’t written enough.

o All posters should contain at least one multimodal element.

o Be sure to explain this element to your audience. What information is it

communicating? How is that information important to the audience’s understanding

of the issue?

o See Canvas for a sample poster. You can download the sample to use as your template.

o A grading guide will be available on Canvas.