There are many resources for helping students prepare effective short talks, long talks, posters, and make the most of conferences:
- An Elevator Talk exercise provided by CRA-WP guides undergraduate researchers to develop a 1- and 3-minute presentation of their research.
- Scott Drysdale of Dartmouth College provides advice on Giving Technical Talks.
- Lorrie Cranor (CMU) writes for XRDS magazine with advice on preparing and presenting an undergraduate research poster (originally published in 1996, updated in 2010).
- Janet Davis (Whitman College) and Christine Alvarado (UCSD) contributed an article to ACM Inroads on Supporting Undergraduates to Make the Most of Conferences (2017).
You can also encourage students to participate in student research competitions. For example, many conferences, such as the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), host student research competitions. Students can also enter undergraduate research competitions at the ACM Annual Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. The Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing hosts a student research poster session. As a more affordable alternative, you can encourage your students to enter a regional student research competition hosted by the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC).