2014 Annual IS Student Research Poster Contest

  • poset constest 1Time: April 10 (Thursday), 2014, 3:30pm – 5:00pm
  • Place: Hallway on the 4th Floor of the ITE Building

Description The IS student research poster contest provides a forum for graduate and undergraduate students to showcase their ongoing or completed research, exchange research ideas, sharpen their presentation skills while competing for awards. The competition accepts submissions on a broad range of topics relevant to the field of information systems. Participant qualifications: The lead author of a poster must be a graduate or an undergraduate IS, HCC, or BTA student who has conducted the research work.  The contest consists of three tracks: graduate completed research, graduate work-in-progress, and undergraduate research. Each poster should be submitted to ONLY one of these tracks.

  • Graduate completed research track (gcp): Completed work should solidly demonstrate significant theoretical development, sound research design, pertinent data collection methods, appropriate data analyses and results, and findings that extend or improve our state of knowledge. The poster could be based on the graduate student’s doctoral dissertation, master’s thesis, independent study, or course project.
  • Graduate work-in-progress track (gwip): This track is intended to encourage presentation of research projects that are not completed but might be of significant interest to the IS research community. The work-in-progress should have significant theoretical or conceptual developments, research propositions or hypotheses, proposed methods and/or a data analysis plan. Some preliminary evidence that demonstrates the feasibility and promise of the propositions/hypotheses would be preferred.
  • Undergraduate research track (ugr): Undergraduate students may present either completed or work-in-progress research based on their honors research or other course projects. Students are encouraged to use this contest as a warm up for 2014 URCAD.

Important Deadlines:

  • Tuesday, April 1, 11:59pm EST: abstract submission.
  • Friday, April 4, 11:59pm EST: poster submission.
  • Thursday, April 10, 3:30pm – 5:00pm EST: poster contest.
  • Friday, April 11 (tentative): poster awards announcement.

Poster Preparation and Instruction:

  • Submission: Abtract and Poster submission details are still being worked out.  More information will be available soon.
  • Three-poster limit: Each student may submit no more than three (3) posters, either as the sole author or a co-author. Any submissions received in excess of this limit will not be reviewed for this contest.
  • Presentation: The student authors should start to set up their posters half an hour in advance (3 pm on Apr. 10). The students will be expected to give presentations to faculty judge and other audience and answer their questions during the contest. Audience is allowed to cast one and only one ballot per person for his/her favorite poster. Ballots will be made available and collected during the contest.
  • Awards: The winners of the contest will receive awards as dollar credits toward either purchase at UMBC bookstore, conference travel, or other types of research expenses (e.g., paying for a voice recorder for a user study). Selected posters will be also displayed in the 4th floor hallway and on our department web site. The winners will be awarded as follows:
  1. Top placement award: The top-placement in each track will receive $100 worth of award.
  2. Runner-up awards: One or more runner-ups will be selected for the tracks that receive seven or more quality submissions. The first runner-up will receive $75 and the second $50 (if any). The number of runner-up awards will depend on both the quality and quantity of submissions.
  3. Audience Choice Award: The poster that receives the most votes based on the audience’s ballot will receive $50.

Selection Process: The research posters will be evaluated by a panel of IS faculty judge using the following criteria:

  • Novelty of the research
  • Potential to make contributions to the IS field
  • Soundness of method design
  • Relevance of data analyses
  • Organization of the poster Oral presentation and question answering

All submission inquiries should be sent by email to Dr. Zhou at zhoul@umbc.edu using the subject line: “research poster contest”.