The Chair

Your role as Chair of a session
For the poster and round table sessions the role of the chair and discussant are combined.

The main task of a chair is to moderate a session: you will introduce the presenter, and the discussant(s). During the presentation and the discussion afterwards you will keep track of time. As mentioned above, for all paper presentation sessions we have assigned two discussants, to give PhD candidates the opportunity to practice their future role as a discussant. After the paper presentation, you will first give the floor to this junior discussant, and after about 5 minutes to the senior discussant.

Also keep an eye on the “conversation pane” to involve the audience in the discussions. You will pose the questions asked there, to keep the conversation going. The chair should facilitate the discussion to make sure the audience gets an opportunity to participate in the discussion.

Chairing a poster session:

Poster sessions will be in Wonder.me. This software gives the discussants and audience the opportunity to roam around the room, and visit different posters after the poster pitches.

For more information on how this works, Download the instructions for a poster session.

To enter this session as a host use this link, to be able to give broadcasting rights to the presenters.

At the start of the session, the appointed chair will invite the presenters of this session to the broadcast. Presenters are now asked to introduce their poster during a 3 minute pitch. After this short presentations you will end the broadcast, and the audience will roam around the room to discuss the posters with the presenters, who are at their appointed number. There are two discussants in the session. Please keep track of the time yourselves, so you can discuss al posters appointed to you. The discussants will discuss both content and lay-out of the poster. With regard to the lay-out, the following points can be discussed:

§ The clarity of the poster (overall)

§ The extent to which the poster draws attention

§ The clarity of the textual information the poster conveys

§ The clarity of the graphical information the poster conveys

§ The originality of the design of the poster

Duration of the various presentation types and discussions:

Duration of a paper presentation and discussion

Total duration: 30 minutes

§ Presentation: 10 minutes

§ Discussion: 15 minutes (starting with the jr. discussant (5 minutes), and then the sr. discussant (5 min.), followed by the group)

There will be 2 paper presentations in a session of 1 hour

Duration of a poster presentation and discussion

Total duration: 1 hour

§ The session starts pitch by presenters (per poster): 3-5 minutes. After all pitches, all posters will be discussed simultaneously, while the audience can move between the different posters for the remainder of the hour.

Duration of a round table presentation and discussion

total duration: 30 minutes:

§ Presentation/pitch: 5 minutes

§ group discussion: 25 minutes