English Section, School of Management and Languages

Pre-Sessional Portfolio
As part of your assessment for speaking, you will work with a partner to pro-
duce a poster for presentation in Week 6 of your course. This is equivalent to
10 % of your overall mark for the Project Course. You need to identify a part-
ner who is interested in a similar topic so that you can work together to pre-
pare and present the poster. On the day of the assessment, you will have a
chance to interact with an audience of your classmates before your teachers
come around to assess your poster and your interaction.
You can work with a student in your class or you can find a student from a
different class who shares the same academic subject as you. This partner-
ship needs to be negotiated and agreed by the end of Week 2. There will be
a session arranged in week 2 for students without a poster partner to meet
each other and form pairs. With your partner you will identify an academic
theme. For example, you might both be going to study similar degrees and
you can choose a theme related to your discipline, but this is not essential.
You might find a partner from a different discipline and explore a theme that
your disciplines have in common.
In week 2 (or 3) you will have a lecture by a Heriot Watt librarian and you will
practise finding, selecting and comparing sources. This will help you and your
partner to agree on the theme for your poster. You will then work together on
your poster outside class time, in preparation for presentation in week 6.
You should look carefully at the Assessment criteria for the Poster Presenta-
tion and note that you will need to incorporate accurate citation of sources for
information included in your poster. You will also need to explain and justify
aspects of your poster to other students and assessors in Week 6. The mark
for the poster is shared between you and your partner. This means you also
need to ensure that you collaborate equally in creating the poster and in the
interaction when you present it. If one person does all the talking, your marks
will be reduced.
Poster Presentation
You will be given a backing sheet of paper which is A2 in size. You will be
able to paste sections you have formatted in MS Word
TM
onto this. It is possi-
ble to use other programs to make posters but we do not have facilities for
printing these. If you want to have your poster printed, you need to e-mail
your request to mediaservices@hw.ac.uk. The cost of printing an A2 Lami-
nated Poster is 21; the cost of printing is 15.75 (prices correct 03/06/14).
You would need to send your poster by Thursday, 14th August to collect it on
Tuesday, 19th August. You need to send either pdf or ppt files only.
Please read the assessment rubric for posters so that you know what the
assessors will be looking for, e.g. make sure you include references to
sources if you borrowed their ideas.
On Wednesday of week six, you are expected to attend all day so that you
can present your poster in one session and act as an audience in another
session to interact with other poster presenters. There will be two poster ses-
sions, one in the morning from 10.00am and one in the afternoon from
2.00pm. Your posters will be displayed in the Crush Area of the Earl Mount-
batten Building. Please refer to the HP noticeboard to find your location &
time.
There will be a list of names on the noticeboard outside HPG10 to tell you
when and where your poster will be displayed. On the list next to yours and
your partners names you will find a number. You should find this number on
the wall in the Earl Mountbatten building and display your poster at that point.
Posters for the morning can be put up on the wall between 9.30 and 10.00am
and taken down again after 12.00 noon. Posters for the afternoon can be put
up between 1.30 and 2.00pm and taken down after 4.00pm.
The student audience will circulate and interact with you to learn about the
topic in your poster. Note this is not a formal presentation by you of your
poster but a conversation between you, your partner and several of your
classmates at different times during the session. Your teachers will circulate
and listen to these conversations in order to give you and your partner a
grade. They are also likely to ask you and your partner questions directly, to
assess your research and understanding.
Poster format and display