Module 23 Activity Worksheet

Module: Module 23: Posters, Abstracts, and Conferences
Duration: 4 hours
Generated from the module page. Edit modules/module23.md, not this file.

Capability target

Submit a conference-ready abstract, produce a coherent poster draft, and deliver a defensible 90-second pitch with clear claim boundaries. Operationally: your abstract spends its word budget on evidence rather than motivation, a stranger can find your core result on the poster within ten seconds from two meters away, and you leave the session with at least two named follow-ups you initiated yourself.

You are done when you can demonstrate this, not when you have filled in every box below.

Before you start

Check that you have:

• At least one completed analysis or mini-project
• Basic scientific writing experience

Bring one question you already have about this topic. Write it here so you can check at the end whether it was answered:

My question:

Questions this module answers

Keep these in view. At the end, answer each in one sentence.

1. What makes an abstract competitive and technically honest?
   • Your answer:
2. How should poster design reflect inferential structure?
   • Your answer:
3. Which conference norms should be taught explicitly?
   • Your answer:

The task

Scenario: You have one accepted poster slot and must communicate your connectomics result to mixed audience members. Two of the people who stop are specialists who will ask about segmentation quality; one is a program director who will ask what it means; one is a peer at your own stage who wants your code.

1. Produce one abstract against the sentence budget and one poster wireframe tested at two meters.
2. Deliver a 90-second pitch to a timer, twice, cutting on the second pass.
3. Respond to two audience questions, including one about reconstruction quality.
4. Draft one follow-up outreach message that sends something rather than asking for something.

What you hand in

• Abstract draft
• Poster wireframe
• Pitch script
• Follow-up message template
• A named target list of five people and one question for each

Working checklist

Tick as you go. If you skip a step, write why — a skipped step with a stated reason is a decision; a skipped step without one is a gap.

• Distill the project into one claim hierarchy: one headline claim, at most two supporting claims, one limitation attached to each.
• Draft the 250-word abstract against the sentence budget, then delete every sentence that does not help a reviewer judge credibility or significance.
• Check the abstract names species, region, imaging modality, segmentation pipeline, version or materialization, proofreading state, and n. If any is missing, a reviewer will assume the worst case.
• Build the poster wireframe around three evidence panels, placing the headline finding in the upper third where it is readable at two meters.
• Write and rehearse the 90-second and 3-minute versions. The 90-second version is not the 3-minute version spoken quickly; it is a different script with the background removed.
• Prepare a follow-up template and a target list of five to eight people you want to talk to, with one specific question for each.
• Run critique for clarity, limitations, and the professional interaction plan, and revise before the submission deadline rather than after acceptance.

Evidence and reasoning

Fill one row per claim you make in your artifact. A claim without a limitation is not finished.

Confidence. For your main claim, mark one and say why:

• High — two or more independent lines of evidence agree
• Medium — one strong line, or several that share a weakness
• Uncertain — the deciding evidence is not available to me

Why:

One alternative I considered and rejected, and the reason:

Misconception self-check

These are the errors this module is designed to prevent. Confirm you did not make them, or note where you nearly did:

• I did not assume: A strong motivating paragraph can compensate for thin results.
• I did not assume: Dense text signals that the work is thorough.
• I did not assume: Good science speaks for itself and networking is optional decoration.
• I did not assume: If the conversation went well, the other person will follow up.

Session timing (facilitator reference)

Rubric

Score yourself before anyone else does. Where you fall short, name the specific next action rather than a general intention.

• Minimum pass: abstract claims are evidence-grounded and name dataset, version, and n; poster layout surfaces core result and limitation; the pitch communicates method, result, and limit within time.
• Strong performance: handles Q&A with precise uncertainty language, adapts to the audience in front of them without changing the evidentiary standard, and produces follow-ups that are specific, sent within days, and initiated rather than inherited from a supervisor.
• Common failure to flag: overstuffed abstracts with missing quantitative anchors, posters organized by chronology instead of argument, and overconfident responses to unresolved technical questions. Also flag a learner whose entire target list consists of people their supervisor already knows.

My self-assessment:

• Strongest part of my work, and the evidence for that:
• Weakest part, and the specific next action:

Exit prompt

Write a 5-sentence mini-abstract including question, method with dataset version, result with one number, limitation, and implication. Then count how many words went to the field and how many to your result; if the first number is larger, rewrite the opening sentence.

Your answer:

Peer review (swap worksheets)

Reviewing someone else’s reasoning is the fastest way to see the gaps in your own. Assess the evidence quality, not whether you agree with the conclusion.

• Is every claim paired with specific evidence?
• Is at least one limitation stated, and is it a real one?
• Is the confidence level justified by the number of independent evidence lines?
• One thing this person did better than me:
• One question I would ask them:

Module page: /modules/module23/ · Slides: /modules/slides/module23/ · Facilitator guide