Guidance on preparing a poster– due 13th March 2025.
You will be assessed on:
· The layout and design of your poster; and whether it is clear.
· Your knowledge and understanding of the topic – Is the topic relevant? Are your points well supported from the literature? Have you critically engaged with the literature?
What are you being asked to do?
The question guidance says:
Develop a health promotion initiative for use with postgraduate students. This might be related to any pertinent health issue e.g. diet, exercise, stress, emotional support/mental health. This initiative should be targeted at the micro level. In developing this initiative, students should focus their efforts on a specific cohort of students.
The poster must include one power point slide and is in keeping with what you might present at an academic conference. This exercise is designed to take you through the stages of the development of a health promotion intervention and while this will necessarily be on a very small-scale basis, the exercise should promote learning related to a systematic approach to such an endeavour. When referring to evaluation you can talk about how you will evaluate the intervention.
So – what is your topic? – what is an issue you think affects postgraduate students?
The guidance says it is to be at the micro level and a specific cohort of students – who do you think is affected by this issue? MPH students at UofG? International students at UofG? Part-time students? Female students? Can you clearly outline the context and justification: which postgraduate students are the focus; why this issue; how might this fit with national/local policy; data to justify your proposed intervention (only include what is relevant). If you don’t have specific data for postgraduate students on the extent of the issue you could use data from a similar population, like undergraduate students or a non-academic adult population - but acknowledge that this isn’t the same thing to show you know this.
Choose a programme planning model to help you be systematic in how you develop this intervention. If it makes sense each of the steps in your chosen planning model can be one ‘box’ of your poster. Write about this as if you have hypothetically planned, implemented, and evaluated your intervention:
1. Did you scope the issue?
2. Did you develop potential interventions and test them?
3. How did you implement the program?
4. How did you evaluate the change process? - in this case talk about how you will evaluate the intervention as you haven’t actually done it
5. Was there follow up?
In terms of the intervention – You can make up your own intervention, but it could also be one that is already happening in UofG. In this case you want to show how the intervention can be adapted to fit your target group. This helps you be evidence-based as you are taking an existing intervention and adapting it or finding ways to encourage your target group to use it or know about it. Make sure you cite the intervention if it is already in use elsewhere.
Use language from the module/application of theories and concepts (as appropriate) – eg who are key/primary/secondary stakeholders? What behaviour change approach is used and why? What approach to evaluation will be used - process? Outcome evaluation?
Develop your poster on a powerpoint slide and upload it. You might have a table or logo for a campaign or picture on it somewhere to make it look attractive.
A critical approach should be taken – use evidence and justify your choices. If you are building on an existing intervention, what might be changed to better fit your chosen population?
These are just suggestions – there isn’t only one right way to develop the poster. You can work on developing your own writing style. rather than fitting into someone else’s approach.
Further guidance
Think about how a poster at a conference might look like. NHS Scotland has some examples from of eposters a conferences:
NHS Scotland eposter examples - https://my.ltb.io/#/showcase/nhs-scotland-eposters
Formatting guidance:
· The poster should include text, images/graphics and references (a minimum of 5).
· The poster should be created electronically.
· You may decide to use a software package (e.g. PowerPoint) to do this.
· Any images should be referenced, ensuring that you have permission to use them.
· The word count for your poster is 300-500 words (+ 10%), excluding your references.
This assessment will be graded using Schedule A of the University of Glasgow’s Code of Assessment.
Markers will consider the following aspects of your poster:
• Has the student clearly stated the topic and related issue?
• Appropriateness of the chosen topic - has the student provided a sound rationale for why this issue is important?
• Collaborators - Has the student identified what stakeholder(s) were involved in delivering the intervention?
• Impact - What were the implications? Was there conflict or issues with implementation?
• Supporting literature – is the poster supported with appropriate evidence?
• Clarity of message – does the poster get its message across in a clear and logical manner?
Additional poster design advice
Additional poster design advice is available from a Google search – see for example
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/academic-skills-kit/assessment/academic-posters/
https://gla.sharepoint.com/:p:/s/Research_Services/EVi8NjBAE1BGmkDYmVhWdqYBuA3crpGY9KWGloectqmVuQ?e=yi593a
Briggs, DJ 2009, ‘A practical guide to designing a poster for presentation’, Nursing Standard, vol. 23, no. 34, pp. 35-39.