Science Educational Outreach Programs That Benefit Students and Scientists

Greg Clark, Josh Russell, Peter Enyeart, Brant Gracia, Aimee Wessel, Inga Jarmoskaite, Damon Polioudakis, Yoel Stuart, Tony Gonzalez, Al MacKrell, Stacia Rodenbusch, Gwendolyn M Stovall, Josh T Beckham, Michael Montgomery, Tania Tasneem, Jack Jones, Sarah Simmons and Stanley Roux

PLOS Biology, 2016, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-8

Abstract: Both scientists and the public would benefit from improved communication of basic scientific research and from integrating scientists into education outreach, but opportunities to support these efforts are limited. We have developed two low-cost programs—"Present Your PhD Thesis to a 12-Year-Old" and "Shadow a Scientist”—that combine training in science communication with outreach to area middle schools. We assessed the outcomes of these programs and found a 2-fold benefit: scientists improve their communication skills by explaining basic science research to a general audience, and students' enthusiasm for science and their scientific knowledge are increased. Here we present details about both programs, along with our assessment of them, and discuss the feasibility of exporting these programs to other universities.The education outreach programs “Present Your PhD Thesis to a 12-Year-Old” and “Shadow a Scientist” provide opportunities for scientists to improve science communication skills and for students to learn about research.

Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002368 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file ... 02368&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pbio00:1002368

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002368

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Biology from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosbiology ().