Access to high quality evaluation results is essential for science communicators to identify negative patterns of audience response and improve outcomes. However, there are many good reasons why robust evaluation linked is not routinely conducted and linked to science communication practice. This essay begins by identifying some of the common challenges that explain this gap between evaluation evidence and practice. Automating evaluation processes through new technologies is then explicated as one solution to these challenges, capable of yielding accurate real-time results that can directly
This report is part of a four-year evaluation assessing the impact that the Working with a Scientist Program at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) had on its first cohort of participants. Participants were students from a regional high school that were selected to take part in research activities every other Saturday during the Spring semester and on weekdays during the summer. The evaluation components included in this report focus on assessing students’ academic performance and the gains the students made while in the program. It also focused on an assessment of students’ perceptions
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Guadalupe CorralJacqueline LowereeJoseph Negron
It’s important to communicate the excitement and value of NSF-funded research. This tool (formatted as a Prezi presentation) helps you do that with assistance from NSF public affairs experts, exploring options for communicating your research and broader impacts.
Measuring impact may be challenging, but does that mean we should accept a lack of ambition? Researchers in all fields are grappling with the challenge of how to measure impact (in many different contexts, which naturally leads to many different approaches), and so perhaps it is not surprising that the ‘impact culture’ is spreading to public engagement. But is the field rising to the challenge or should we think more broadly about how we demonstrate impact, perhaps freeing individual and smaller projects from the need to measure public impact and allowing them instead to focus on formative
This paper reflects on the evaluation of and findings from a nationwide programme of physics engagement activities hosted by 10 science centres across the UK. We discuss our findings indicating the affordances of the programme with reference to the wider literature in order to draw out elements of the project that may be useful for other science learning and engagement initiatives. In particular, we discuss findings that relate to contemporary research and policy interests around the engagement of girls in science, the key ages at which young people’s views may best be influenced, the
RedPOP celebrates its 25th anniversary and the congress was a great occasion to commemorate it. More than 400 attendees from 23 countries around the world had the opportunity to talk about the relationship between art, science, education, public policy on science appropriation, science journalism, and new ways to reach the public audience. At the same time a Science Theater Festival was held. The Congress in numbers: 5 Magisterial Conferences, 245 simultaneous presentations, 8 Working Groups, 9 simultaneous Workshops, 22 poster and 6 theater plays. 10 countries from Latin America
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Martha Cambre
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Red de Popularización de la Ciencia y la Tecnología en América latina y el Caribe (RedPOP) (Latin American and Caribbean Network for the Popularization of Science and Technology) was created 25 years ago as an expression of a movement that started in the 1960s in favour of a scientific education. The purpose of this movement was to incorporate science into the general knowledge of the population by communicating science through different media, products and spaces such as museums and science centres. Since then, the movement has acquired considerable strength in Latin America and RedPOP
This essay seeks to explain what the “science of science communication” is by doing it. Surveying studies of cultural cognition and related dynamics, it demonstrates how the form of disciplined observation, measurement, and inference distinctive of scientific inquiry can be used to test rival hypotheses on the nature of persistent public conflict over societal risks; indeed, it argues that satisfactory insight into this phenomenon can be achieved only by these means, as opposed to the ad hoc story-telling dominant in popular and even some forms of scholarly discourse. Synthesizing the evidence
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dan Kahan
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The drive for impact from research projects presents a dilemma for science communication researchers and practitioners — should public engagement be regarded only as a mechanism for providing evidence of the impact of research or as itself a form of impact? This editorial describes the curation of five commentaries resulting from the recent international conference
‘Science in Public: Research, Practice, Impact’. The commentaries reveal the issues science communicators may face in implementing public engagement with science that has an impact; from planning and co-producing projects with
The organization and functioning of research have radically changed over the last 10 or 20 years, as a result of a determined political action. The activism of some scientists, during this period, has failed to significantly alter this trend. So far. Today, New Public Management is triumphant. It has been implemented by a category of former scientists who have become administrators, evaluators, organizers. As a result, the prime role of scientific publications is no longer to exchange scientific information but to allow a measure of scientific production, and to rank the principal
A survey was conducted during the University of Manchester’s 2014 ‘Science Extravaganza’, which saw the participation of over 900 Key Stage 3 (ages 11–14) students in a range of interactive demonstrations, all run by active University researchers. The findings of this study suggest that a new approach is necessary in order to use these large science events to actively engage with school students about the career opportunities afforded by science subjects. Recommendations for such an approach are suggested, including the better briefing of researchers, and the invitation of scientists from
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sam IllingworthEmma LewisCarl Percival
resourceevaluationProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to evaluate participants’ experiences in the “Telling Your Science as a Story” pilot workshops, which seek to empower ASM members, who are scientists, to develop more effective science communication skills through hands-on activities, reflection, and discussion. The purpose of the evaluation was to provide ASM with useful information about participants’ experiences in the pilot workshops to inform future development of ASM’s science communication programming.
How did we approach this study?
RK&A