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Presenter Information

Oral presentations offered at each Biennial Conference on Chemical Education are a great way to share findings of effective practices for teaching and learning. We appreciate all of the work that the presenters do to prepare and deliver their talk. Presenting a talk at a professional meeting is providing a service to the chemistry education community. Faculty often have an obligation to show they are engaged in professional practices and the BCCE is a great way to do this. 

Abstracts

Abstract Submissions are now closed. Presenters can access submissions via the BCCE Exordo Platform. Choose “Symposia Contributions”. Presenters selected the best fit from among the accepted titles and description of symposia. 

Registration and Meeting Attendance are Required

Once your name and institution affiliation are listed on the 28th BCCE program (on-line and in print) you are obligated to present your talk. The American Chemical Society requires you, as a presenter, to register for the BCCE. 

Presenter Guidelines

The conference will be organized around four themes - Classroom Practice and Learning Environments, Curriculum and Cognition, Assessment and Research Methods, and Professional Development - within the K-12, two-year college, and university communities.

Chemistry educators come to the BCCE, having read the program, and wanting to meet you and to learn all they can from your presentation. It is the presenter’s responsibility to communicate the research question, the big ideas, data to support claims and scholarly commentary that are at the core of the presentation in a way that is accessible to the audience. Presenters should prepare and deliver papers in such a way that they provoke meaningful thought and discussion or inform the audience of an effective teaching and learning practice. 

To this end, presenters should check the following for quality and accessibility:

  • Organize the paper around a clear question or argument
  • Establish the significance of this question or argument from the literature or from actual data
Visual Aids
  • Use visual aids such as projected slides, videos, projected presentation slides, multimedia, or handouts
    • Use large (at least 24 point), simple, san serif fonts (e.g., Helvetica) that can be easily read by most individuals from the back of a large room
    • Use background and text colors that are high in contrast and avoid combinations difficult for people who are color blind to read. Do not use color as the only method for conveying information
    • Describe visual aids to the audience such as the color, size, shape, etc.
    • Make sure that backgrounds are not cluttered and leave plenty of “white space”
    • Use large, simple charts and tables
    • Avoid presenting images of complex charts or tables
    • Make sure that videos used in your presentation are captioned. 
Presentation Delivery Preparation
  • Use an accessibility checker (example: Microsoft Accessibility Checker) to evaluate if your projected slides can be communicated to a broad audience including those with disabilities
  • Practice the presentation ahead of time in the allotted time (15 minutes) in front of a group of colleagues
  • In practicing your presentation, please plan to remain near the podium microphone or use a mobile microphone so all attendees can hear the presentation.
  • Prior to presentation, presenters are strongly encouraged to upload a copy of their presentation in the Exordo platform for attendees to access. This is very helpful to attendees with visual and attention impairments, captioners, and sign language interpreters.
Question and Answer
  • Expect members of the audience to have some questions. Be prepared to answer the question asked and consider engaging the audience using multiple modalities (examples: PollEverywhere, Google Forms, Microsoft Forms, etc.)
  • Repeat questions participants pose into the microphone to ensure that everyone in the audience understands them.
  • Be attentive to your allotted presentation time: conclude your presentation within that time, do not request additional time, do not continue reading/speaking past the conclusion of your allotted time, respect the presider’s obligations to the other presenters and the audience

Presentation Authorship Rules

The BCCE follows the “rule of two”. Thus, the maximum number of presentations you can make should reflect one of the following combinations:    

  • 2 papers
  • 2 posters
  • 2 workshops
  • 1 paper and 1 poster
  • 1 paper and 1 workshop
  • 1 poster and 1 workshop