This month, I attended the Frontiers in Education (FIE) conference for the first time. I enjoyed the smaller size of the conference, the sit-down lunch, and the availability to network with those that stopped by our booth. One of my responsibilities while at the conference was to present a poster during the student poster session, for which I chose to create a poster on the status of my dissertation work. However, I did not yet have any data to share with the attendees because my dissertation is still in progress, so I needed to come up with a poster design that did not use any data!
At the suggestion of our advisor, I created an interactive poster for attendees to engage with me and my methodology directly. The methodology I selected for my dissertation is Q methodology, which requires the participants to physically sort cards containing statements based on how strongly they agree or disagree with the statement, relative to one another, into a quasi-normal distribution shape (the Q-sort board). This process is called a Q-sort. To demonstrate this process to a larger audience, I decided to create smaller, example Q-sorts for the conference attendees. For one Q-sort, participants could sort cards containing breakfast food items. For the second Q-sort, participants sorted cards with movie genres. The example Q-sort board and statements that they could choose to sort are shown in the figure below.
Having an interactive poster at a conference was an interesting experience! When I would ask attendees walking by if they would like to learn more about how Q methodology works, I received mixed responses. Some would say “no” and continue walking on without interest in the activity. Others would like to discuss my poster and the methodology, but they were not interested in engaging with the interactive components of the poster. However, I did get a handful that said “yes!” and were excited to participate in the quick activity! One attendee who stopped by said he had been trying to learn how to do Q methodology on his own, but had not been able to understand it. He commented that after our discussion and his interaction with the activity on my poster, the methodology made sense to him!
Overall, while not everyone was excited to engage with an uncommon, interactive poster, it was successful it explaining Q methodology for those that did. And I plan on using the same interactive techniques in future posters and presentations.