CFAES Give Today
SENR

School of Environment and Natural Resources

CFAES

Learning effectiveness of online poster symposium focus of new article

June 10, 2022
Introduction to Environmental Science (ENR2100) with a person walking on the campus of The Ohio State University.

A new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Education describes how an online poster symposium can be used as a unique educational experience and assessment tool in a large-enrollment, online, asynchronous, natural science, general education course.

Ella Weaver, instructional aids associate and Kylienne Shaul, instructional development specialist in the School of Environment and Natural Resources are lead authors on the publication.

 

Figure 1 in the published article showing course weeks, learning activities and assessment/feedback.

Figure 1 in the article, "Implementation of an Online Poster Symposium for a Large-Enrollment, Natural Science, General Education, Asynchronous Course." 
According to the article, "Students were surveyed in order to evaluate the quality of instruction and learning with regards to scientific posters, to determine if poster assignments were meeting learning objectives, to understand if a virtual poster symposium was a rewarding educational experience for students, and to gauge student comfort with and preference for using technology in our course."

In the article, the authors demonstrate how student scientific posters can be used as a particularly effective writing assignment that includes an interactive online poster symposium and peer review. Ways students engage in higher order learning during their analysis, synthesis and evaluation of scientific research and are able to demonstrate that they have achieved specific course learning outcomes, including skills for effective written, oral and visual communication are discussed.

The authors also describe how online technology (e.g., learning management systems) allows an instructor to incorporate a scientific poster symposium in an asynchronous, large- enrollment, natural science course, but also easily adapted for synchronous distance education courses as well as upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses.

The paper is part of Frontier’s special research topic: Innovations in Remote and Online Education by Hydrologic Scientists.


Article citation:

Weaver EM, Shaul KA and Lower BH (2022) Implementation of an Online Poster Symposium for a Large-Enrollment, Natural Science, General Education, Asynchronous Course. Front. Educ. 7:906995. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.906995

Tags: