Facilitating Critical Feedback on Capstone Papers Through Student Poster Sessions

department of political science at Brigham Young University. His teaching and research interests focus on comparative politics with a focus on the role of civil society in democratic transitions and democratic consolidation in East Asia. He can be reached at danny damron@byu.edu. Students in capstone seminar courses in political science are often required to go through the same research and writing process that professional political scientists go through in producing publishable work. Students often approach this exercise as the crowning achievement of their undergraduate careers. However, both students and the professors who work with them face constraints that may compromise the quality of the final paper. For example, many students lack direction in the research and writing process and miss opportunities for periodic critical evaluation and feedback of their work at each stage of the writing process. In addition, although capstone classes are generally small (in my case between 18 and 20 students), professors have limited time in which to read and provide extensive comments on students' drafts. Because students are in the infancy of their socialization into political science, and because of time constraints on the part of the professor, students' efforts often result in papers that fall short of their professor's expectations. Generally, this is true not because students lack the commitment or desire to produce good work, but because they: (1) lack a framework that promotes substantive discussion of complex research questions in basic ways; (2) are unaware of feedback resources that political scientists tap into when preparing a transcript for publication; (3) are unaware of the benefits of approaching the project in cooperative fashion; (4) fail to generate deadlines not mandated by the professor and thus do most of their substantive thinking and writing only during that critical last week before the paper is due; and (5) are fearful (in some cases) of sharing their unfinished work with their professor and others. Likewise, the absence of periodic critical feedback is not the result of professor ambivalence, but rather the outcome of professors who must balance student demands with demands from other classes, with their own research and publishing objectives, and with other departmental responsibilities. One way professors can help remedy those deficits and promote more detailed feedback is to require students to plan and participate in a mock professional conference poster session a few weeks before the final draft of the research paper is due. This activity is productive for the students in many ways. First, this exercise forces the students to condense their research paper down to essential arguments and support that can be conveyed in a few short minutes. Second, it ensures that the evidence and analysis presented clearly connect to those arguments. Third, it forces the students to take a critical look at their work to date and identify what issues they are still struggling with. Fourth, this activity functions as a catharsisthe research process is often a lonely process for students; this gives them a chance to discuss that process in a lowpressure situation. Fifth, it gives students a chance to see how far they have come and to receive encouragement from their peers and from the professor. Sixth, it provides students with added incentive to move closer to completion of the paper sooner than they normally would. And finally, it gives students a valuable piece of citizen education the skill of making presentations can be transferred to both scholarly and nonscholarly settings after graduation. The outcome, in terms of the practicality of this exercise, is that students critically evaluate their peers' work and receive critical evaluation in return which can then be incorporated into the final draft of the paper. In this paper I describe how I use a mock professional conference poster session to facilitate critical self-evaluation and to elicit critical peer feedback that can be used to improve student research papers. This process includes having students generate the criteria for effective posters, helping students identify specific components of their papers to include (and to exclude) in their posters, facilitating student planning of the logistical components of the poster session, conducting the poster session, facilitating critical and useful feedback, evaluating the posters, and integrating feedback into revised drafts of the research paper. I found that students who participated in the poster session made significant and substantive revisions to their paper drafts and that these changes dramatically improved their final papers. As a bonus, students also gained valuable experience in making presentations and in improving their presentation skills.