Poster presentations are being used increasingly as a method of assessment in nursing (Davis 2000). Although published accounts of their use are scant in this country there is evidence that the method stimulates a positive attitude to learning (Halligan 2007) facilitates applying the theory of research and nursing to the practice setting (Conyers & Ritchie 2001) and enables the development of transferable skills which will ultimately serve to enhance care delivery (Handron 1994).
The authors module contains a poster presentation summative assessment worth 20%. The group consists of undergraduate first year students who are studying general adult nursing and several “branch” students who in second year will branch into children’s mental health learning disability nursing and midwifery. McMullan (2016) found the students enjoyed the poster presentation and found it developed many skills that were beneficial to their development as a nurse such as communication and literature critique However this study also raised students concerns the main being that marking was subjective and “it depended on who marked you” as to whether you got a high score or not a common opinion held by students the literature would suggest (Falchikov 2013). Secondly students revealed they believed that mature students would do better as they had more of the skills necessary for a good presentation from previous life experience that females would find this an easier task than men and that branch students would get better scores than their general adult nurse colleagues.
Despite employing clear marking criteria (Tisi et al 2013) support for new markers and a robust internal and external moderation of marks which is regarded as good practice (Bloxham 2009) we were still faced with uncertain reliability and certainly a lack of faith in the robustness of the marking by students (Bell 2013). An extensive search found no literature whatsoever that investigated the scores awarded from poster scores except for scant reporting of claims of reliability based on the spread of marks (Jackson 2000 Huntley-Moore 2005).
