Presenters

Each oral presentation slot will be 15 minutes long, which should include a ten-minute presentation followed by five minutes of questions and answers. Prepare your presentation to be ten minutes long to ensure you leave time at the end for the audience to ask some questions or to comment on your work.

The schedule of the conference will be strictly maintained, so you are strongly encouraged to rehearse your presentation to ensure you have enough time to deliver all the content within the allocated time slot.

Remember that BCUR will have participants from a range of disciplines and it is important that you try to explain you work using a language that can be understood by someone not familiar with your subject. Use simple and clear language, avoiding too much technical jargon.

Usually, a ten-minute presentation will have 12-15 slides and will follow this sequence:

Slide 1 Title of the work, your name (and of co-authors if relevant), name of your course and university

Slide 2 Outline of the presentation

Slides 3/4 Background information

Slide 5 Study site (if relevant)

Slide 6 Methods

Slides 7/11 Results, analysis, discussion

Slides 12/13 Conclusions or summary

Slide 14 Acknowledgements (funding sources, collaborators)

Slide 15 Thank the audience

Write text in bullet points, using keywords or short sentences, avoiding long paragraphs. Make good use of visual displays (tables, graphs and images) that help you summarise your data or key messages. Focus on the key findings and ‘take home’ message. You may want to use and repeat your keywords throughout the slides to emphasise your main points.  You can find general guidance at a range of online sources.

File formats

The Conference lecture rooms are equipped with Windows operated computers loaded with Microsoft Office. Acceptable presentation formats are PowerPoint and PDF.

Please read the conference programme carefully and identify in which session and room you are scheduled to present. If you have videos embedded in your presentation, you are strongly encouraged to test whether they will play correctly in one of the rooms ahead of your session. This will give you some time to fix the problem or find an alternative solution if needed.

You will not be allowed to use your own laptop as this may cause technical issues and delays, disrupting the progress of the session. Please bring your presentations on a USB memory stick to your allocated room at least 10 minutes before the start of the session. Introduce yourself to the person acting as session chair; he/she will help you and give information about the session.

All presenters and audience are expected to stay in the room for the duration of the session. Usually, each session will last for one hour and will have four presenters. The session chair will call your name when it is your turn to present. At the eighth minute of your presentation, the session chair will give a signal (usually, by displaying a yellow card), alerting that you have two minutes to conclude your presentation. Another signal will be given when the ten minutes are up and you should then conclude your presentation. 

The session chair will then thank you and invite the audience to ask questions or comment on your presentation. You should continue in your position for the duration of the Q&A part of the session. When the 15 minutes are up, the session chair will close the Q&A for your presentation and thank you again before calling the next presenter. You can then return to your seat.

Your poster should be designed to fit either A0 portrait or A1 landscape. Other sizes may not fit on the poster boards available.

Remember that BCUR will have participants from a range of disciplines and it is important that you try to explain your work using a language that can be understood by someone not familiar with your subject. Use simple and clear language and avoid using too much technical jargon.

Design the poster using a good balance of text, tables, graphs and images (consider which display formats are more suitable to present the content of your work). Posters with too much text are often not read, we recommend you try and keep your poster between 300-500 words.

Design the poster to be easily scanned by eye and focus on the key findings and ‘take home’ message. You may want to use and repeat your keywords throughout the text to emphasise your main points. Although a formula for the perfect poster does not exist, you can follow some broad guidance that tends to work well for most types of work. You can find general guidance at a range of online sources.

The poster sessions will take place in the Sports Hall. 

Please arrive at the location at least 15 minutes before the start of the session to set up your poster in your allocated poster board. A member of the organising committee or a volunteer will be available to help if you require any assistance. 

You should stay by your poster for the duration of the poster session to explain and discuss your research with students and academics attending the session. Discussing your work with others during the poster session gives you a great opportunity to obtain feedback and get new ideas to improve your work or for future research.