March 22, 2019

Noah Mendoza

Purpose:

The purpose of today’s lab was to present the rough draft of our poster and receive critiques regarding the design, layout, and information presented on our poster.

Procedure:

While in the computer lab, we were the first group to present our poster. We briefly talked about our introduction, results, method, discussion/conclusion along with the figures we choose to present. We were given critiques to make our poster better, along with some ideas about design and how it will eventually print out. Afterwards, we were given rubrics to grade the posters of our peers. The rubrics were filled out with scores and comments about why each score was given. Following the completion of the presentations, we got into groups and further critiqued our posters to make them better for next week’s deadline.

Results:

• Gels: Increase size, label each well, include the size against the DNA ladder
• Get rid of the spectrophotometer image, and present data in a table
• Label the figures “Figure 2”
• Rewrite the conclusion and the methods section with the end of the experiment being the PCR results
• Materials and Methods: remove the “next generation sequencing” and the “meta barcoding and analysis,” move MB and A to the discussion section
• Include the common name of the tree, “evergreen”
• Include the soil metadata
• Be sure that the poster is all written scientifically
• Elaborate on the silica bead method we created, how it helped to extract DNA and how we used a DNA column
• Include information about what a ciliate is and the limited information we have about their diversity
• Include 3 references
• Change the text font to 24-28

Conclusion:

We received many critiques, but they were very constructive and will aid in the building up of this poster into the best it can be.

Future Goals:

In the future, I will use this knowledge to make my rough draft posters of higher quality from the beginning. Also, I will work with my group to implement all of the constructive critiques we received regarding our poster to make it ready for its next presentation.