Pacific Branch Student Ten-Minute Paper Competition Information

Evaluation & Judging

Students who present ten-minute papers (10-min) in the Student Competition for the President’s Prize will be evaluated in the following areas:

• Scientific Content (55%)

  • Title concise, informative, and relevant for presentation content (5 points)
    • Judges will score the title given at the start of the presentation, not what is listed in the program.
  • Introduction and background with pertinent literature cited (10 points)
  • Objectives or hypotheses clearly stated and concise / Objectives of course design or teaching program clearly stated and concise with learning gaps and target audience(s) identified (10 points)
  • Materials and methods (study design) clear, concise, and appropriate to problem / Course or program design development and relevant evaluation metrics clear, concise, and appropriate for the learning gaps and audience(s) (10 points) 
  • Interpretation of results and analysis clear, concise, and accurate and addresses needs of target audience (10 points)
  • Significance of results to field of study or teaching community and targeted audience clearly discussed (10 points)

• Presentation (45%)

  • Logical order, minimum redundancy (5 points)
  • Smooth transitions between presentation slides and sections, including speaker introducing themselves to the audience (5 points)
  • Slides use universal design principles with appropriate fonts, font sizes, high contrast images (for example, avoiding color schemes that are hard to distinguish for colorblind participants like red/green) (5 points)
  • Slides have no grammatical errors and are not excessively wordy (5 points)
  • Effective use & description of visuals (i.e. photos, diagrams, figures, and tables); do they support the presentation narrative?  (15 points)
  • Appropriate volume (uses microphone if available) & speed of speech; clear communication; please note, score should not be dependent on audio equipment (5 points)
  • Effective use of time; 10-12 minutes with appropriate balance across presentation sections, with time to field audience questions effectively (5)

View the Scoring Rubric