NSCPHD1228 PhD Course on Applied Science Outreach

Volume 2014/2015
Education

PhD students at the Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen.

Content

The Natural History Museum of Denmark offers a practitioners course teaching PhD students how to communicate their specialized research to non-specialists. We move the teaching out of the classroom and let PhD students engage in public outreach by sharing their knowledge through various outreach programs at the Museum. 

Effective dissemination of research results is no longer only a question of doing conference and poster presentations or writing publications for academic journals. Rather, a world of multifaceted types of outreach has emerged in which broader communication skills are required. 

The objective of the course is to train PhD students in different types of outreach, e.g. collection based teaching, practical lab work, presentations at high school around the country, citizen science projects and talking to the media. This will be done on a basis of theories introduced by outreach professionals and scholars. The overall aim of this is to improve PhD students’ communication skills through a combination of theory and practice. 

The course runs over a period of four months, starting every February and September where an initial introduction to outreach and communication theory is given and debated with a number of outreach professionals. 

Following this theoretical part of the course, all PhD students will take part in two or three of the museum’s outreach programs. In this practical part of the course, PhD students will e.g. take part in the Science on Wheels program which provides science education to high schools throughout Denmark. As part of this, the PhD students will be giving lectures to hundreds of high school students at a time. Another possibility for PhD students will be to participate in the DNA & Life program in which high school students explore biodiversity in Denmark through analysis of water samples. In this program, PhD students will take part in the instruction of the high school students when they visit the museum’s state of the art laboratories to analyze water samples and learn about DNA, species and biodiversity. Other possible outreach programs for PhD students to be involved in could be the Botanical Garden Day, Geology Days, BioBlitz, geological fieldtrips, teacher inspiration days, etc. 

Learning Outcome

Participants will after the completion of this course be able to:

  • Take part in public outreach programs
  • Teach outside classrooms
  • Communicate their own research
  • Customize presentations to different types of audiences, e.g. primary school pupils, museum visitors, high school students and journalists. 

Selected articles will accompany the lectures during the two days of introduction. Students will receive these in advance.

2 full days of introduction, including lectures on:

− Being the expert – how to do well in TV and radio
− Performance and rhetoric when presenting scientific material
− Understand your target groups
− Oral presentations and how to create the perfect PowerPoint presentation
− Visual communications and the use of photos in presentations
− How to ask good questions and give good answers
− Collection-based science education
− Body language as an essential tool
− Communicating in informal settings

All outreach activities carried out by the PhD students will be supervised by an outreach professional. After each activity, the efforts and performance of each PhD student will be evaluated in a dialogue between the PhD student and the outreach professionals attached to the specific outreach program. This way, the PhD students’ practical skills are continuously developed and improved throughout the course period.

Decisions on what outreach programs the individual PhD student will take part in is made by the course coordinator, and will depend on the student’s skills and field of research.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Guidance
  • 5
  • Lectures
  • 15
  • Practical Training
  • 60
  • Preparation
  • 45
  • Total
  • 125
Credit
5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Course participation
Marking scale
passed/not passed
Censorship form
No external censorship
Re-exam

The introduction does not have to be taken again if the outreach activities are not conducted in the originally planned semester.

Criteria for exam assesment

The course is passed based on active participation in the two day introduction and the following outreach activities specified by the course coordinator after the two days of introduction.