VIRTUAL POSTER SHOWCASE: AN UPDATE FOR THE GEOSCIENCE COMMUNITY

The Virtual Poster Showcase (VPS) enables geoscience students to present their research from anywhere in the world without traveling to a conference (which is often a hardship, especially for two-year college students) and to gain valuable feedback on their research and presentation. In addition, the program also helps students learn how to provide feedback on others’ science. Research has shown that all of these experiences collectively can increase student engagement and retention in the geosciences. The VPS platform is very easy to use and consists of three basic steps which include submission of abstract, uploading the poster and a short video presentation explaining the work, and judging three peer posters online and receiving feedback/comments on their own posters. This three step process makes this a unique experience for students as well as for their faculty mentors and for those scientists and faculty who help to judge the posters.

The 2015 showcases enabled 71 students from 13 different countries to present their posters. The Spring 2016 showcase had 36 undergraduates participating from 4 different countries. The two remaining showcases for this year will take place in the fall. Overall students reported gains in confidence in both preparing and presenting research posters as well as the impact on their careers based on post-showcase evaluations. This presentation will discuss evaluation results from completed showcases, stories and anecdotes about the showcases impact on individual students and faculty, as well as plans for the future.