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IAH 244: Ethical Systems and Moral Dilemmas

This guide is designed for students IAH 244: Ethical Systems and Moral Dilemmas. It provides access to resources on APA citation, paper formatting, and more.

Software and Tools for Designing Your Poster

There are many different websites, software packages, and templates you can use to create your research poster. Here are just a few recommended ones.
  • Canva: Canva is free online design and publishing tool with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere. They have specific templates for posters that can be found here. 
  • PowerPoint: PowerPoint is a program that has easy to use options that most of us us have access to and have used in the past. PowerPoint is part of the Microsoft Office Suite. You will find there are a lot of pre-made templates for scientific and academic posters available online in PowerPoint format, so that’s just an added bonus.
  • Keynote: Keynote is another easy to use option that comes along with a Mac or iPad purchase.
  • Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign: Adobe has a range of products that can also be used to make posters, however, Adobe products are far more expensive and a little more complex to use. So unless they’re something you already have access to or something you’ve used in the past, I wouldn’t recommend them.

Online Templates and Tips

  • Dr. Colin Purrington: Dr. Colin Purrington is a professor at Hudson University, on his personal website he shares templates and tips for creating academic research posters.

  • MakeSigns.com: Make signs.com has a lot of great templates as well as great tips on things such as suggested fonts, colour schemes for posters and other tips for posters that will make them more dynamic and professional.
  • Genigraphics: Genigraphics is a website that has templates for your research posters. It has a lot of different sizes, formats, and colour schemes.

     

Images for Your Poster

I know we are often tempted to just do a google search for images, however, there are some issues with this. Often the images are protected by copyright or are very low resolution. These are a few of my favourite websites to find images for your presentations that are high resolution.

Websites to Access Quality Images for Your Research Poster

  • Unsplash: Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty free or stock photos.

  • Pexels: Free stock photos & videos you can use everywhere. Browse millions of high-quality royalty free stock images & copyright free pictures.

  • Wikimedia Commons: Wikimedia Commons is part of the non-profit, multilingual, free-content Wikimedia family.

  • Flikr Creative Commons: Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.

  • Flikr: The Commons: The key goal of The Commons is to share hidden treasures from the world's public photography archives.

  • Science.gov Image Search: Science.gov searches over 60 databases and over 2,200 scientific websites to provide users with access to more than 200 million pages of authoritative federal science information including research and development results. Once you conduct a search, click on "multimedia" for images from NASA and other well-known scientific research agencies.

  • ZU Library’s Image Databases: Zayed University has many databases with images and videos that you can use in your presentations. Just make sure that you've included the appropriate citations, so that creators may have credit for their work.