Normally, Sofia Vallila Rohter has her second-year speech-language pathology students hold a poster session as part of her Evidence-Based Practice for SLPs course. With students continuing to take classes from their homes, she used Zoom conference technology to hold a virtual event for her 42 students.
 
For almost three hours on a recent morning, the assistant professor played traffic cop. As students arrived at the Zoom conference, she moved them in and out of breakout rooms where their peers were presenting their literature reviews or mock research studies on selected topics based on their clinical experiences and areas of research.
 
“Our students are used to preparing 10-minute talks that are followed by a Q&A period, something they do all the time in class, but what’s unique about a poster session is that it's a fluid conversation,” said Vallila Rohter, who also is a co-director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Group at the IHP.
 
Vallila Rohter explained to her students that they would have to acknowledge new visitors entering the virtual room while continuing to speak and engage with the people already there. “It was a more dynamic format, very similar to how things go at a scientific conference,” she said. “This was a good opportunity to give them experience with that.”
 
Ruby Klein, Julia Holzwasser, and Mary Sanderson, who co-presented “Visual Phonics – An Effective Way to Teach Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students How to Read? A Literature Review,” said that while they were initially hesitant about how their presentation would translate electronically, they discovered using the Zoom breakout room feature allowed their poster to be accessible.

“Having our classmates pop in and out of our poster session felt similar to how the flow of an in-person poster session would go. We liked having the ability to zoom in on our poster to highlight a section we were speaking about,” they noted. “We also found it helpful that our classmates could ask questions or make comments using their microphones or the chat box.”

 After the virtual session ended,Vallila Rohter noted that the debriefings were very similar to those held after in-person poster sessions.

The activity is designed to teach them principles of research, research design, and critical evaluation of results while also giving them practice with the real-world experience of creating and presenting a poster, said Vallila Rohter. She added students will likely have the opportunity to share their work and clinical experiences in professional conferences at some point in their careers. 
 
Students’ Virtual Posters

“Monolingual vs. Bilingual Intervention for Developmental Language Disorders”
by Crystal Arguello, Danisha Bernard, Mika Genatossio, Carly Levine, and Rebecca Myhill
 
“Effects of Individual vs. Group Therapy for Patients post-Wendler’s Glottoplasty”
by Darya Deker, Rebecca Lapide, and Sarah Kim
 
“The Effectiveness of Orthographic Facilitation in Speech Sound Intervention”
by Elise Gallegos, Natalie Gardino, Rachel Haskins, and Courtney Perrigo
 
“Do Children with Cerebral Palsy who Require Augmentative and Alternative Communication Have a Greater Rate of Improvement in Reading When Receiving One-to-One Literacy Instruction Than When Receiving Classroom-Based Literacy Instruction?”
by Yulia Katsman, Mashael Almansour, and Hadir Haza
 
“Visual Phonics – An Effective Way to Teach Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students How to Read? A Literature Review”
by Ruby Klein, Julia Holzwasser, and Mary Sanderson
 
“Effect of low socioeconomic status on literacy skill development in early elementary aged children?”
by Meghan Kean, Rachel Barrett, Rachel Sepulveda
 
 
“Impact of Orton-Gillingham Literacy Intervention with Incarcerated Teens”
by Meredith French, Allison Gonzalez, and Casey Foster
 
“Appropriateness of Diet Recommendations in Adults with Oropharyngeal Dysphagia: A Literature Review”
by Holly Sullivan, Caroline Colorusso, and Sarah Blushi
 
“Predicted Effect of Shared Semantic System on Bilingual Aphasia Treatment”
by Hope Kentala, Alexandra Lovric, Breanna Brennecke, and Elizabeth Melesio
 
“Informing Treatment Selection Targeting Vocal Quality”
by Kelly Linehan, Sarah Aimone, Meyyammai Muthu, Krystal Radnor, and David Despotakis

“The Effects of Auditory Versus Visual Input on Teaching Grammatical Structure for Bilingual ELL Students.”
by Heidi Blackham, Mica Chacon, Alexandria Lai, Elisabeth McNeill, and Brianna Williams

 

Sofia Vallila Rohter's Poster Presentation