This Pilot and Feasibility study will build foundational knowledge about basic aspects of STEM webcams in the United States (US) from the perspectives of both practitioners and viewers. Thousands of webcams available to the public are operated by STEM organizations, such as zoos, museums, and government agencies. Learning theory suggests that STEM webcams, especially those with accompanying interpretive tools, have the potential to offer rich informal learning opportunities. However, yet no research has quantified any aspect (cognitive, behavioral, or emotional) of viewer outcomes. This study will be the first to develop baseline data regarding cognitive, behavioral, and emotional aspects of perceived viewer experience. Project activities include:
An inventory of STEM webcams that exist in the US, the STEM disciplines they represent, learning and engagement tools they employ, the number of viewers they reach, and the resources required for their operation
A survey of webcam operators, their STEM education goals, implementation strategies, and evaluation results; and
Surveys and interviews gathering data on viewers demographics and potential increase in curiosity, interest, knowledge, and behavior toward the STEM subject. This research will provide foundational knowledge for the STEM-education and research community that quantifies and describes many facets of the population of STEM webcams in the inventory.
Research activities will take place in three distinct phases, with Phase 1 laying the groundwork for Phases 2 and 3. Phase 1: The project team will conduct a systematic internet search for all identifiable STEM related webcams. Phase 2 (operator-focused): An online survey of practitioners of webcams operated by US-based STEM organizations will be conducted using Qualtrics software. Likert scales will be used. Various hypotheses will be tested regarding webcam program objectives, operations, and evaluations from the perspective of program operators or practitioners. Phase 3 (viewer-focused): Surveys and interviews with likely viewers of STEM webcams. Using the webcam inventory built in Phase 1, the team will collaborate with 20 informal STEM institutions that agree to survey their constituents to test hypotheses regarding webcam viewing practices, such as why and how viewers watch, and perceived outcomes of viewing, such as perceived influence on their interest, attitudes, knowledge, or behavior. The findings from this study will be widely shared with informal STEM institutions and webcam operators. It will provide foundational data for future experimental studies.
The popularity of the anti-vax movement in the United States and elsewhere is the cause of new lethal epidemics of diseases that are fully preventable by modern medicine [Benecke and DeYoung, 2019]. Creationism creeps into science classrooms with the aim of undermining the teaching of evolution through legal obligations or school boards’ decisions to present both sides of a debate largely foreign to the scientific community [Taylor, 2017]. And one simply has to turn on the TV and watch so-called science channels to be bombarded with aliens, ghosts, cryptids and miracles as though they are
Science communication research is dominated by Western countries. While their research provides insight into best practices, their findings cannot be generalized to developing countries. This study examined the science communication challenges encountered by scientists and science communicators from Manila, Philippines through an online survey and semi-structured, investigative interviews. Their answers revealed issues which have been echoed in other international studies. However, challenges of accessibility and local attitudes to science were magnified within the Philippine context. These
Who speaks for “citizen science” on Twitter? Which territory of citizen science have they made visible so far? This paper offers the first description of the community of users who dedicate their online social media identity to citizen science. It shows that Twitter users who identify with the term “citizen science” are mostly U.S. science professionals in environmental sciences, and rarely projects' participants. In contrast to the original concept of “citizen science”, defined as a direct relationship between scientists and lay participants, this paper makes visible a third category of
Reflecting on the practice of storytelling, this practice insight explores how collaborations between scholars and practitioners can improve storytelling for science communication outcomes with publics. The case studies presented demonstrate the benefits of collaborative storytelling for inspiring publics, promoting understanding of science, and engaging publics more deliberatively in science. The projects show how collaboration between scholars and practitioners [in storytelling] can happen across a continuum of scholarship from evaluation and action research to more critical thinking
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michelle RiedlingerJenni MetcalfeAyelet Baram-TsabariMarta EntradasMarina JoubertLuisa Massarani
Student engagement is an important predictor of choosing science-related careers and establishing a scientifically literate society: and, worryingly, it is on the decline internationally. Conceptions of science are strongly affected by school experience, so one strategy is to bring successful science communication strategies to the classroom. Through a project creating short science films on mobile devices, students' engagement greatly increased through collaborative learning and the storytelling process. Teachers were also able to achieve cross-curricular goals between science, technology
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kaitlyn MartinLloyd DavisSusan Sandretto
Public confidence in research is important for scientific results to achieve societal impact. Swedish surveys suggest consistent but differing levels of confidence in different research areas. Thus, certain research-related factors can be assumed to have a decisive influence on confidence levels. This focus-group study explores the role of different narratives in shaping public confidence in research. Findings include four themes with potential to increase or decrease public confidence: Person, Process, Product and Presentation. The results offer insights as to how public confidence in
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Fredrik BrounéusMaria LindholmGustav Bohlin
This research develops a conceptual framework for telling visual stories about science using short-format videos, termed SciCommercial videos, that draw upon marketing communication. The framework is illustrated by an exemplar, the Good Whale Watching video, which is explained using a visual rhetoric keyframe analysis. Finally, the effectiveness of the video is evaluated as a science communication tool using an empirical online survey with 1698 respondents. The results highlight the benefits of using video for storytelling about science by using our framework formula, modified from marketing
Can we really say what type of story has impact on us, and what type of story does not? Evidence suggests that we can. But we need to better understand the way that stories work on us, at a neural and empathetic level, and better understand the ways that the elements of stories, such as structure and metaphor work. By combining scientific research with the deeper wisdom of traditional storytelling we have both a deep knowledge married to scientific evidence — which can be very powerful tools for science communicators.
The last three decades have seen extensive reflection concerning how science communication should be modelled and understood. In this essay we propose the value of a cultural approach to science communication — one that frames it primarily as a process of meaning-making. We outline the conceptual basis for this view of culture, drawing on cultural theory to suggest that it is valuable to see science communication as one aspect of (popular) culture, as storytelling or narrative, as ritual, and as collective meaning-making. We then explore four possible ways that a cultural approach might
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sarah DaviesMegan HalpernMaja HorstDavid KirbyBruce Lewenstein
There is a renewed interest amongst science communication practitioners and scholars to explore the potential of storytelling in public communication of science, including to understand how science storytelling functions (or could fail) in different contexts. Drawing from storytelling as the core theme of the 2018 conference of the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) Network, we present a selection of papers, essays and practice insights that offer diverse perspectives. Some contributions focus on the cultural and structural qualities of science stories and its key success
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marina JoubertLloyd DavisJenni Metcalfe
This is a survey we developed in 2018 for our exploratory research study of listeners and their parents/guardians of the children's science podcast, Brains On!. The survey includes questions about who listens, when and where children listen, children's listening behaviors, motivations for listening, activities after listening, household information, and demographic questions.