The BIG Picture

Bloom’s Taxonomy

In July, I travelled to the Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne for the BIG Event – an annual science communication conference organised by the British Interactive Group. The schedule was jam-packed with workshops on a range of topics, from maths and magic to mapping and makery, and I came away buzzing with inspiration and ideas. Here, I reflect on three sessions and consider how these themes influence my science communication practice:

 

Thinking, doing, talking science

I have young children, so I was interested to learn about ‘Thinking, Doing, Talking Science’ (TDTS) – a programme that aims to make primary school science lessons more practical, creative and challenging and encourage higher-order thinking. Rather than teaching facts, teachers ask ‘big questions’ and the children use their knowledge creatively. Teachers using the approach have found that Year 5 pupils make three additional months’ progress in science, compared with standard teaching practice ¹.

The idea of moving away from factual recall comes from educational psychology. It was developed by Dr Benjamin Bloom to promote analytical and evaluation skills and the pyramid of higher-order thinking (see diagram) is known as Bloom’s taxonomy ².

TDTS shows that children become more confident in science when they are encouraged to ask questions and given the opportunity to think. And there are some easy ways to do this, like the Odd One Out game: choose three random objects and say which is the odd one out and why. Of course, there is no right answer but it’s a great way to practise lateral thinking.

My daughters inspire my blog, which celebrates their curiosity. I don’t have answers to all their questions but Simple Scimum gives us a platform for discussion. Do you know how do mermaids go to the loo? Me neither. But with some higher-order thinking, we think we’ve worked it out!

Impact

Over the past decade, ‘impact’ has emerged as a buzzword (see RCUK and HEFCE definitions) to describe the positive effects that academic research can have on the world. And, whilst the concept is becoming normalised in academic practice and research assessment ³ – for example, those who seek Research Council funding must consider Pathways to Impact (i.e. who could benefit from their research and how?) – the potential breadth of impact is vast. By attempting to pin it down, we confer on researchers a responsibility to evaluate and collect evidence of impact. They therefore face a challenge in balancing their scholarly role as teachers, mentors and researchers with their societal role as public intellectuals and ‘impact-makers’.

Thankfully, public engagement is one way to increase research impact. The REF 2014 impact database contains 4,871 case studies with ‘public engagement’ as keywords. And a quick search identified 35 case studies submitted by UWE, including one about engaging with a local patient group to improve leukaemia treatment.

This is great news for me because my role as a Research Fellow is to work with researchers to co-develop projects that engage public audiences with research at UWE, Bristol and to evaluate and analyse the effectiveness of these engagement activities. So far this year, I’ve developed a genetics activity for BoxED and looked at the impact of continuing professional development on science communications practice. I’m also investigating attitudes towards festivals and the effects these events can have on communities, co-designing an approach to create music from bioluminescent bacteria, and visualise what it is like to live with chronic pain.

Not everyone chooses to visit a museum or attend a lecture, so I try to use the everyday ways that people communicate to engage audiences with information about research and make science part of our cultural narrative. For my collaborators, I hope the impact will be in raising the profile of their research, thinking about how it can be informed by the experiences of those outside academia, and celebrating the outcomes and benefits with a public audience.

Post-truth

It is suggested that we live in a ‘post-truth’ era in which objective facts have a lesser influence on public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal beliefs. And if believing is more important than fact-checking, ‘alternative facts’ that undermine established theories can gain currency. But attempting to redress this by flooding people with evidence is not the answer – indeed, it can make things worse as people become more closely anchored to their core beliefs and align themselves with those with similar views ⁴.

But what if science curiosity could counteract biased information processing ⁵ ? Perhaps our role as science communicators is to make science part of public culture and cultivate curiosity, rather than to educate public audiences about scientific issues? And if we can do this by making emotional connections with our audiences and drawing on lived experiences, so much the better.

Maybe we should learn from the TDTS programme and develop innovative and creative communications that promote higher-order thinking across all audiences? And what if this encourages critical thinking and normalises scientific literacy in everyday life. Just think what impact that could have…

Kate Turton

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References

1. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Publications/Campaigns/Evaluation_Reports/EEF_Project_Report_Thinking__Doing__Talking_Science.pdf
2. Adams, N. E. (2015) Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive learning objectives. J. Med. Libr. Assoc. 103(3) p152-153
3. Wilkinson C. (2017) Evidencing impact: a case study of UK academic perspectives on evidencing research impact. Studies in Higher Education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2017.1339028
4. Broks, P. (2017) Science communication: process, power and politics. JCOM. 16(4), C02
5. Kahan, D. M. et al (2017) Science Curiosity and Political Information Processing. Advances in Political Psychology. 38, Suppl 1 p179-199

Tweet or perish – practical tips on post-publication digital engagement

Last month, Cristina Rigutto (communications consultant and social media editor at Public Understanding of Science Journal) came to speak to us, as part of our ongoing series of science communication seminars, about increasing the impact of our research through ‘post-publication digital engagement’. This isn’t about creating ‘impact’ in the REF sense of the word but the use of social media and online news streams to engage a wider public audience with academic research. Here are Cristina’s top practical, time-saving tips for using digital tools in science communication.

Twitter for conferences

Using Twitter is a great way to engage people with your research, especially when you’re attending or presenting at meetings and conferences. Before the conference starts, check Twitter to find out who else will be attending and get in touch with people whose research interests match yours. Let them know that you’ll be presenting and post a visual abstract of your talk or poster to whet their appetite. If you’re going to cite someone else’s work in your presentation, let them know and offer to send them a copy of your slides after your talk. When you get to the conference, tweet your session number and the time and location of your talk along with a picture of your first slide – you’ll encourage more people to come along! Don’t forget to prepare a couple of tweets in advance and ask a friend/colleague to tweet them to share the most salient points from your presentation as you speak. And finally, tweet a link to your slides so that people can download or read them after the event.

Before your presentation:

• Find the speaker and attendee list, network before the event.
• Create visuals to appeal to lay public/ journalists.
• Encourage people to ask questions about your work (in more than one language si possible).
• If you’re citing someone, let them know, offer to send them a copy of your presentation, everyone likes a freebie!
• Tweet session number, time, room number.
• Prepare tweets in advance.

Live tweet  – now an essential part the conference experience!

After your presentation:

• Be open and willing to continue the conversation after the conference has ended.
• Tweet a download of your presentation.

Twitter is also useful for networking outside conference settings. If you publish a paper, tweet the DOI link, include a screenshot of the abstract and use appropriate hashtags. Use direct messages to contact people who may be interested in your work – share your paper and ask them for their opinion. Search for people by discipline or profession to find academics, journalists, students and bloggers who might be interested in your research. Follow them and they might follow you back! You can also use altmetrics to find out who is liking or retweeting your research and then you can get in touch with them.

• Tweet your paper using the journal’s DOI link (ensures google will pick it up), use appropriate hashtags, include a screen shot of the abstract.
• Direct message (DM) people who may be interested in your work – ask their opinion.
• Include images/ infographics/ sketchnotes.
• Find relevant academics, science journalists and bloggers and contact with links to a short version e.g. blogpost rather than original paper.
• Use Journal altmetrics to find out who has tweeted your research – record the names and invite to suitable event.
• Tweet according to a country’s local time.
• The right followers is more important than the number.

Instagram

For many people Instagram seems to be mainly about celebrity lifestyle photos, holidays, culinary creations and well, a sepia tinted view on life – but there is definitely a use for it in the academic world:

It is very difficult to predict your Instagram audience in comparison to Twitter; however, you can often reach a larger lay public. Take the student who spent his summer holidays collecting faecal images (yes, taking pictures of poo!). After posting them on Instagram he ended up answering questions from the general public about the excreta related science – people were fascinated – and this is a good point, people are naturally curious so show them something interesting.

So, how can you use Instagram to show the human side of your research?

• Use it during the research process.
• Use a wide range of pictures – the inside of a lab is fascinating if you’ve never seen one before, try SciArt and selfies!
• Introduce staff members.
• Always include accurate and complete information about the image in the text.
• Include some humour
• Post some videos (more popular than images) – these don’t have to be long or artfully directed, just a few seconds of you talking works!

In short, we came away with a lot of practical tips and ideas for promoting our research that won’t take up too much time. See you all in the social media arena!

Jane Wooster and Kate Turton