Poster Initiation Activity

This guidance helps you to facilitate the poster initiation activity. The goal of this activity is to have a shared expectations and clear poster structure to guide the team’s work on the poster moving forward. The expectation is not to have a completed poster at the end of this session. This work will be required for submission in Gradescope.

Before the workshop, the TA should: Set up a physical sticky-note board (use a digital board only if the meeting is online) with three labeled areas: Category | Replicate | Avoid
Note: For efficiency, list only the category numbers based on those provided in the facilitation deck table (Slide 3 or 4), so team can quickly reference the correct poster section.

Have 2 different colors sticky notes one for "replicate" and one for "avoid" type.

Overall Purpose
Introduce the purpose of the session: This facilitation helps teams translate PD 9 poster critique feedback into clear Team Poster Section Expectations to guide poster strategy and initiation. Walk through the agenda and expected outcomes

As a team, discuss the purpose of the symposium and poster. Some students may answer "because it is part of the curriculum." That is a valid answer.
Use this moment to guide the discussion toward the broader purpose: sharing work with an external audience, communicating impact clearly, supporting meaningful conversation beyond the TDM meetings. A poster should allow someone to understand the problem, approach, and key takeaway even when the team is not present.

During PD 9, students completed the Poster Critique assignment and should already have a sense of poster expectations based on their evaluations and written feedback. This activity moves students from individual critique to shared team-level expectations.

Step 1: Individual recall
Ask each student to review/recall the feedback they previously wrote for both posters, focusing on what they identified to replicate and avoid within based on the rubric category.

Step 2: Pair discussion
Have students form pairs. Each pair discusses their feedback using the following questions:

Step 3: Insights Sharing
Based on the discussion, ask each pair to write two sticky notes describing elements to replicate and two sticky notes describing elements to avoid. Emphasize that each sticky note must clearly reference a specific poster category. Pairs then share their notes with the entire team by placing them on the board next to the corresponding category.

Output: Board with sticky notes clearly linked to each poster category

The board now contains multiple sticky notes from each pair. Actively lead this activity by reviewing the board category by category. Facilitate discussion to help the team reach agreement on a shared team approach for each poster section/category. Guide the team to clearly identify what should be replicated and what should be avoided in each category.

If a category has no notes, support the team in defining expectations by leading a short discussion on what should be included and what should be avoided for that section. If the team is quiet, directly invite a specific team member to respond to initiate discussion.

When helpful, use the Honorable Mention poster examples (linked here) to prompt ideas and guide the discussion.

Once completed, take a snapshot of the board and assign one team member to convert it into a file and save in MS Channel by the end of Sprint 10.

Output: Completed Team Poster Expectations Board & File saved in the MS Teams Channel

Guide the team through initiating the poster PPT utilizing Expectation Poster Board when necessary. Assign one team member to start the PPT file. This can be done in one of the following ways:

Direct the team to focus on establishing the overall structure:

Output: Initiated Poster with overall structure file saved in the MS Teams channel

This guide was created based on the Poster Initiation Deck.