h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My Uni keeps using the word 'poster' referring to what I assume is an file or advert.. Here's the text from a uni email. "Please see attached poster or visit (web address)"

Has anyone else seen the word used this way? A poster to me is a big shiny picture or someone who posts things. I know of no other use for the word. Where has this word come from; is it an American academic thing like 'semester' ?

My children's school use this in their e-mail notifications The first time I saw it I went looking for an attatchment with a big shiny picture on it!!!!
Weird business, it's the only place I've seen it. Be interesting to see where it originates.

Tch. Philistines!

But...why would they send hard copy of a poster if they have your email address?

I'm confused further by a lecturer who sent an email stating;

"Hi All,

Your poster instruction is provided in the Assessment section underneath
Edinburgh in Moodle . The Posters will ahve to take place on Tuesday the 10th and Wednesday the 11th April due to your numbers...."



We are not designing posters to the best of my knowledge- we are giving presentations... It's like this random usage of the word has suddenly just popped into existence. If I swap the word 'poster' for 'presentation', the email makes sense...

Predictive text error?

There are such things as poster presentations. Are you sure you're not supposed to do one of those?

TRiG.

OK, so what's a poster presentation?

and the word has started cropping up in too many places to be a typo I reckon.

Poster presentation: You make a poster. You stand beside your poster and answer questions.

Just as a talk/presentation ends with a Q&A session. A poster presentation replaces the talk with a poster, but still has Q&A.

I think. Something like that, anyway. People who are still in the academic world may have a better idea.

TRiG.

#1 "Please see attached poster or visit (web address)"


This normally means a "poster" as in a presentation or advertising poster in the form of a pdf or powerpoint file.

#4 ... Your poster instruction is provided in the Assessment section underneath Edinburgh in Moodle . The Posters will ahve to take place on Tuesday the 10th and Wednesday the 11th April due to your numbers...."


Apart from not understanding what "Edinburgh in Moodle" means, I suggest you find the relevant Module Guide for this module and look up the Assessment section, which should explain exactly how you are going to be assessed. The Module Guide should have been given to you at the start of the Module but perhaps to save on printing costs they only "post it" onto the student intranet for you to download yourself.

As others have mentioned above, it seems like you will have to prepare a poster, post it up on a board, and then wait around for the assessors to come around with their mark sheet and questions, which is called a Poster Presentation. It is perhaps a little less daunting than giving a powerpoint presentation to the whole class. However, you need to make sure you understand exactly what is required.

Moodle is a system commonly used by universities for sharing class notes and suchlike. It provides online support to courses. It can contain files to download, ways to contact your tutors, and ways for students to interact and collaborate.

When I was in college, only one of my courses used Moodle. That was as a trial run: they were considering bringing it in for all courses.

TRiG.

At an academic conference there are two sorts of presentation, oral presentations, which are a short powerpoint with questions and answers, and poster presetnations.

For poster presentations one prepares a large A1 poster which summerises your research and hangs it in a specified area. There are specific times where you will be expected to be available next to your poster to answer questions.

Have you ever been a conference poster boy, Z?

What Z said.

I've been a poster boy, but I much prefer to give 'em my full song and dance act. It can be quite soul destroying waiting for someone to shuffle past your poster and have to work out whether and at what point and how enthusiastically to talk to them.

Aren't these posters with e-mails pdfs of posters which you could print out and stick up somewhere if you wanted to? When we were organising an event for Unicef that's how we distributed them.

>> Here's the text from a uni email. "Please see attached poster or visit (web address)" <<

what was attached wouldn't that be your poster?

Well, the lecturer has just got back to me with an apology.. she meant a power point presentation; no A1 glossy pieces of card required Which doesn't really clear up the mystery of why and when the word 'presentation' became redundant and 'poster' replaced it .

I've now had several communications from various uni departments on a range of subjects, either using the word 'poster' in the message heading or body. None of these communications appear to refer to posters as I know them.

I'm very confused. Has an alien come down and swapped a word out of the English language, or has the word suddenly appeared in popular culture somewhere?

No fluffy; a bog standard HTML job advert was attached...

I make a point of not pointing out typos, but Z made a cool transposition there: Presetnation.

I'm now wondering whether we all live in a pre-set nation.

Yeah, I do that quite a lot. My personal favourite is 'conslutation'.