Exercise FTS-03.03 – Your poster from the template to ILIAS

Prof. Dr. Thorsten Jungmann (last updated 2026-10-20)

Relates to FTS-03 Weighing up, citing and designing your poster

Task

In this exercise, you build your poster in PowerPoint from the HSBI template for scientific posters, export it as a file in the Portable Document Format (PDF) and upload it in the group of your Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) in ILIAS, as described in FTS-03, 3.3. On your poster, you need your question and your three answers – your own answer, the answer of the artificial intelligence (AI) and the scientific answer – and your balanced, reflective answer. Work through the seven tasks one after the other. Where the steps differ, you find them separately for Windows and Mac. If you get stuck, open the step-by-step guide below the task – and help each other.

1 Get the template

Download the template from the ILIAS course of this module and open it in PowerPoint.

Step by step

1. Open the course of this module: https://www.hsbi.de/elearning/goto.php/crs/1700726
2. If ILIAS asks you to, log in with your HSBI user name and password.
3. In the course, open the file with the HSBI template for scientific posters in A0 landscape format and download it.
4. Save the file in your folder for this module, under a name that you will find again, for example Poster SDG 9 question a.pptx.
5. Open the file in PowerPoint.
6. The template contains two slides. Keep the first one, with the title in one line and four columns. In the thumbnail pane on the left, right-click the second slide (Mac: Ctrl+click or right-click) and choose ‘Delete Slide’.

2 Turn four columns into three

Adapt the middle section of the template to the three columns of your poster (FTS-03, 3.1).

Step by step

1. Click the border of the text box of the fourth column, ‘Methodological approach’, so that the box is selected and not the text inside it, and press Delete. If an empty box remains, select it in the same way and press Delete again.
2. Delete the caption above this text and the placeholder for a picture above the caption in the same way.
3. In the other columns, delete the placeholders for pictures and their captions as well, unless you want to show a picture there (task 5).
4. The three remaining text boxes still begin below the space of the deleted pictures, and their lower edges lie beyond the bottom of the poster. Drag them up into this space, and drag their lower edges up, so that the footer has room between the columns and the strip at the bottom.
5. Make the three text boxes wider, so that together they fill the width of the poster: drag the sizing handles on their sides. Alternatively, select a box and enter its width in the box ‘Width’ on the tab ‘Shape Format’.
6. Select the three text boxes (Windows: hold Ctrl and click each box; Mac: hold Shift and click each box). On the tab ‘Shape Format’, choose ‘Align’ and then ‘Distribute Horizontally’.
7. Replace the headings ‘Thematic context’, ‘Question’ and ‘Case study I’ with ‘Your own answer’, ‘AI answer’ and ‘Scientific answer’. Delete the second heading in the third column, ‘Case study II’, together with its text.

3 Fill in your question and your answers

Put your question into the header, your three answers into the middle section and your balanced, reflective answer into the footer (FTS-03, 3.2).

Step by step

1. Select the first line of the title and replace it with your question, word for word.
2. Select the second line of the title and replace it with your SDG, for example ‘Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure’.
3. If your question or your SDG does not fit into one line, select the line and enter a smaller size in the box ‘Font Size’ on the tab ‘Home’ until it fits, as on the example poster (FTS-03, 4.5).
4. Replace the dummy text in the three columns with your texts: your own answer as you wrote it; the AI answer as a quotation – the passages that matter for your question, verbatim in quotation marks or paraphrased – with its long reference and the note that it is not evidence, and below it what you found when you checked it; the scientific answer, each statement with its short reference and page.
5. Keep each text short: about 100 words per section (FTS-03, 2.4); only your own answer stays as you wrote it.
6. On the tab ‘Insert’, click ‘Text Box’ and drag a box across the whole width below the three columns.
7. In the box, type the heading ‘Balanced, reflective answer’ and below it your balanced, reflective answer.

4 Fill in the strip at the bottom

The narrow strip at the bottom of your poster carries your name, your bibliography and your overview of tools used (FTS-03, 4.4). You create the bibliography with Zotero. The strip has little room, so you rearrange its boxes.

Step by step

Your name:

1. Replace the address at the bottom left, which begins with ‘Bielefeld University’, with ‘HSBI, University of Applied Sciences and Arts’.
2. Replace ‘Sample name’ with your name, and delete the lines with the department and the e-mail address.
3. To make room for the table, you can move the box with your name below the address, as on the example poster (FTS-03, 4.5).

Your overview of tools used:
4. Delete the two boxes for logos: click the border of each box and press Delete.
5. On the tab ‘Insert’, click ‘Table’ and choose four columns and as many rows as you need – one for the headings and one for each AI tool.
6. Drag the table by its border into the strip, where the boxes for logos were, and make it as wide as the strip allows.
7. In the first row, type ‘Product name’, ‘Access source’, ‘Software functions used’ and ‘Scope of use’. In the rows below, enter each AI tool that you have used, including the AI service whose answer you examine, with the examination of its answer as the scope of use. To add a row at the end, click in the last cell and press Tab.
8. Above the table, insert a text box with the heading ‘Overview of tools used’: the guide to Scientific Work, section 2.10, asks for a table with this title.

Your bibliography:
9. In Zotero, select the entries of all sources that you cite on your poster. To select several entries, hold Ctrl (Mac: Cmd) and click them.
10. Right-click one of the selected entries (Mac: Ctrl+click) and choose ‘Create Bibliography from Items…’.
11. Choose the citation style ‘ISO-690 (author-date, English)’, under ‘Output Mode’ the option ‘Bibliography’ and under ‘Output Method’ the option ‘Copy to Clipboard’, and click ‘OK’.
12. In PowerPoint, select the text ‘© Photos: Sample name, sample source …’ in the strip and paste your bibliography in its place (Windows: Ctrl+V; Mac: Cmd+V). Above it, type the heading ‘Bibliography’.
13. The box is too small for your long references: drag its upper edge up to the line above the strip, its lower edge down towards the bottom of the poster and its right edge up to ‘hsbi.de’.

⚠ If the style ‘ISO-690 (author-date, English)’ is missing from the list in step 11, click ‘Manage Styles…’. Zotero opens its settings on the tab ‘Cite’. Click ‘Get Additional Styles…’, search for ‘ISO-690 (author-date, English)’, click it and start again with step 10.

⚠ Zotero writes the long references from the data of your entries. Check each long reference against its source: authors, year, title and pages.

⚠ On a poster, cite only the key references (FTS-03, 4.1). If your bibliography still does not fit, make the table narrower and the box of your bibliography wider.

5 Add a picture – only if it adds to the content

Use a picture only where it adds something to the content of your poster – no pictures for design or marketing only (FTS-03, 3.3). If your poster does without a picture, skip this task.

Step by step

1. Windows: on the tab ‘Insert’, click ‘Pictures’ and then ‘This Device’. Mac: in the menu ‘Insert’, point to ‘Picture’ and click ‘Picture From File’.
2. Choose the picture and click ‘Insert’.
3. Drag the picture to its place and resize it with its sizing handles.
4. Below the picture, write its caption – in the caption box of the template or in a new text box: ‘Figure 1:’ and a concise description.
5. For a picture from a source, write the short reference on the next line of the caption, and add the long reference to your bibliography.
6. For a picture that you have generated with an AI tool, check what it shows, name the tool on the next line of the caption, for example ‘Image generated with <product> (<model>)’, and add the tool to your overview of tools used.

⚠ An AI picture may only show a scene that illustrates your topic – never data, a diagram or anything that serves as evidence (FTS-03, 4.3).

6 Check your poster and export it as a PDF

Check your poster before you export it, and look at the PDF once more afterwards (FTS-03, 3.3).

Step by step

1. Check that nothing of the template is left over: no dummy text, no headings of the template, no ‘This is a dummy caption …’, no boxes for logos, no sample name and no address of the template.
2. Check the font sizes: no text on your poster is smaller than 24 points (FTS-03, 2.4). The template sets the main text in 30 points and the headings of the columns in 50 points, but its captions and the line for the sources of photos, where your bibliography now stands, in 20 points: set them to at least 24 points. Your bibliography stays smaller than the main text (FTS-03, 4.4). To change a size, select the text and enter the size in the box ‘Font Size’ on the tab ‘Home’.
3. Windows: click ‘File’, then ‘Export’, ‘Create PDF/XPS Document’ and ‘Create PDF/XPS’. Choose your folder for this module, check the name in the box ‘File name’ and click ‘Publish’.
4. Mac: click ‘File’ and then ‘Export’. Under ‘File Format’, choose ‘PDF’, choose your folder for this module and click ‘Export’.
5. Open the PDF and look at it on your screen at the size of a whole page, as the projector shows it in FTS-04. Check that it has exactly one page and that you can see your question and your balanced, reflective answer at a glance.

7 Upload your poster in ILIAS

Upload your poster as a single PDF file in the exercise ‘Poster upload’ in the group of your SDG, by Wednesday 28 October 2026 at 23:55.

Step by step

1. Open the course of this module: https://www.hsbi.de/elearning/goto.php/crs/1700726
2. Open the group of your SDG and in it the exercise ‘Poster upload’.
3. Click ‘Datei abgeben’ (in English: ‘Hand In’).
4. Choose the PDF of your poster and click ‘Hochladen’ (‘Upload’).
5. Check that your PDF appears under ‘Abgegebene Dateien’ (‘Submitted Files’).

⚠ After the deadline, ILIAS no longer accepts uploads.