Moving Poster Project Presentations to the Online Classroom Using Blackboard Wiki Course Tool

Poster board and tri-fold poster projects are a popular way of assessing students’ knowledge of a subject by having them research, write, think, organize and present a topic. Course poster projects encourage students to conduct research, practice writing and presentation skills. Poster projects also prompt students to think, arrange and visually organize content. They are used by instructors as a creative alternative to the traditional, research paper assignment.

Course posters also allow students to acquire applicable skills that are likely to help them in future careers from science and medicine to business, education and non-profits. The poster designing and presenting skills developed in classes may also be beneficial at future business meetings and professional conferences.

Online instructors must find a way to move this traditional face to face project into the online classroom. Blackboard®’s Learning System includes wikis as one of the embedded course tools. A wiki is an ideal Web 2.0 tool for making online, digital or virtual posters. In this online canvas students can design unique, dynamic online posters by formatting the text, adding images and embedding web links, videos, slides and other mash-ups.

In this general session presentation participants will explore skills acquired by students from creating poster presentations, how posters can be used in the professional setting and how these traditional face to face projects can be easily moved to the online classroom setting using wikis.