The Annual Drosophila Research Conference is coming up and I’m busy helping 4 research students prepare for their poster presentations. Because I’m admittedly not great with enforcing student deadlines, my usual MO is to have everyone work at their own pace and then hurriedly deal with the fallout (i.e. 11th hour editing). This year I decided to try something new, that would hopefully prevent stress levels from topping the charts…and it worked!
I know that many of my colleagues have efficient systems in place already (and may be wondering how I made it this far without them), but if you’re looking for a success story on streamlining workflow, read on.
Bolterstein Lab Conference Workflow
3 weeks before the deadline: Initial feedback (draft 1)
I recorded myself giving broad feedback via Zoom. This was a gamechanger!! It saved me so much time not trying to carefully write down what I mean. Also, I could point to areas on the poster for rearranging. For each poster, I tried to focus on first-level editing (e.g. missing info, flow, initial figures)
2.5 weeks before the deadline: Peer review (draft 2)
Students peer reviewed each other in lab meeting by taking turns in the “hot seat.” This helped students with the aesthetics of their layout as they got feedback about what their ideas looked like to different individuals. We also had a chance to talk about big concepts (e.g. summaries vs. conclusions) and work toward writing a 2-minute poster pitch.
2 weeks before the deadline: General writing feedback (draft 3)
I copied all text into a word doc so that students could better see edits/comments (review in PowerPoint is lacking). While it did take a couple minutes to do this, it was worth it (note to self: have students do this step in the future to save time and have them become more familiar with how feedback will be delivered). For this round, I still focused more on comments to try to get students to more fully make and express connections.
1 week before the deadline: Specific feedback (draft 4-6)
This is where I finally took over and gave the serious edits (and there were very few!). All posters were submitted at least a couple days before the deadline.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that adding more structure would help! I’m taking the next step in helping future me by copying this timeline into my calendar as soon as we register for a conference.
This is awesome, Elyse! I should adopt this for our lab…