Present Each Other’s Posters: An update after 15 years

This came up a few years back:

I was at a conference which had an excellent poster session. I realized the session would have been even better if the students with posters had been randomly assigned to stand next to and explain other students’ posters. Some of the benefits:

1. The process of reading a poster and learning about its material would be more fun if it was a collaborative effort with the presenter.

2. If you know that someone else will be presenting your poster, you’ll be motivated to make the poster more clear.

3. When presenting somebody else’s poster, you’ll learn the material. As the saying goes, the best way to learn a subject is to teach it.

4. The random assignment will lead to more inderdisciplinary understanding and, ultimately, collaboration.

I think just about all poster sessions should be done this way.

P.S. In reply to comments:

– David writes that my idea “misses the potential benefit to the owner of the poster of geting critical responses to their work.” The solution: instead of complete randomization, randomize the poster presenters into pairs, then put pairs next to each other. Student A can explain poster B, student B can explain poster A, and spectators can give their suggestions to the poster preparers.

– Mike writes that “one strong motivation for presenters is the opportunity to stand in front of you (and other members of the evaluation committee) and explain *their* work to you. Personally.” Sure, but I don’t think it’s bad if instead they’re explaining somebody else’s work. If I were a student, I think I’d enjoy explaining my fellow-students’ work to an outsider. The ensuing conversation might even result in some useful new ideas.

– Lawrence suggests that “the logic of your post apply to conference papers, too.” Maybe so.

I had this idea a while ago but never did anything with it, so I’m happy to see that Cosma Shalizi independently came up with the idea, tried it out, and it worked:

Some years ago, Henry Farrell and I [Shalizi] ran a series of workshops about cooperative problem-solving and collective cognition where we wanted to get people with very different disciplinary backgrounds . . . talking to each other productively. We hit upon an idea which worked much better than we had any right to hope. . . .

1. Every participant in the workshop writes a brief presentation, with enough lead time for the organizers to read them all. In the context of an inter-disciplinary workshop, what often works best is to describe an outstanding problem in the field.

2. The workshop organizers semi-randomly assign each participant’s presentation to someone else, with enough lead time that the assignee can study the presentation. Again, in the interdisciplinary context, the organizers try to make sure that there’s some hope of comprehension. (While I called this the “presentation exchange”, it needn’t be a strict swap, where A gets assignd B’s presentation and vice versa.)

3. Everyone gives the presentation they were assigned, followed by their own comments on what they found interesting / cool / provocative and what they found incomprehensible. No one gives the presentation they wrote. . . .

Doing this at the beginning of the workshop helps make sure that everyone has some comprehension of what everyone else is talking about, or at least that mis-apprehensions or failures to communicate are laid bare. It can help break up the inevitable disciplinary/personal cliques. It can, and has, spark actual collaborations across disciplines. And, finally, many people report that knowing their presentation is going to be given by someone else forces them to write with unusual clarity and awareness of their own expert blind-spots. . . .

I’ve also used it for disciplinary workshops — because every discipline is a fractal (or lattice) of sub-sub-…-sub-disciplinary specialization. I’ve also used it for student project classes, at both the undergrad and graduate level. . . .

I’m so happy to hear about this.