I was recently involved in the organisation of an event for local secondary school pupils for the Society for Biologyās āBiology Weekā initiative supported by The Physiological Society. The purpose of Biology Week is to celebrate all aspects of the biosciences. We set up a series of interactive displays and lectures and a dedicated online resource available through OpenLearn.Ā
Social exclusion in public engagement with science
On Monday last week I gave a presentation as part of the āEngaging Researchā seminar series being run at the Open University (as you might have guessed since this is their blog!)Ā The seminar series runs in conjunction with two RCUK-funded projects: 'An open research university'; and 'Engaging opportunities'.
My research interests are around who ācountsā as a public for so called āpublicā engagement and how do engagement practices contribute to the exclusion of certain groups.
Martin Hall, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford, came to the OU today to talk about the challenges and opportunities of open access publishing. This was part of Open Access Week at the OU.
The green and gold swamp of confusion
The mire of confusion around the green and gold models of open access ā and which is ābestā ā Ā is trampled by many feet. Too long to rehearse here, Iād suggest a quick definition is that in āāgoldā, the author pays to publish their work in an open access journal, and it is then instantly openly available. This raises the question of who pays the charges, of course. āGreenā open access relies on authors themselves archiving, in publicly-available repositories (such as the Open Universityās ORO) a pre-publication version of work that they have published elsewhere.
From the 1st to 5th July 2013 10 media students from Denbigh School participated in a Media Training Course at the Open University as part of the RCUK-funded Engaging opportunities project. The training was led by staff from the OUās Open Media Unit.
Over the five days of this practical course the students developed and practised new skills, such as working with digital tools and technologies, producing pieces to camera, and editing footage. Six short films were produced over the course of the week. Here three of the studentsāAlice Rose, Connor Bean and Heather Stoneādescribe their experiences. Links to the completed films are embedding throughout the post.
* This post was originally contributed to the Isotope repository on 14th August 2008 by Eric Jensen at the University of Warwick and has been reposted here.
Activity description
Traditionally used by market researchers and social scientists to identify a range of interpretations on a topic of interest, focus groups have recently been adapted by at least two independent teams of public engagement practitioners with the aim of generating dialogue about robotics and health. This article describes the mechanics of planning, design and moderation of focus-group based public engagement events, making reference to these two cases, which were evaluated as part of the Isotope project.
I finished my PhD in volcanology with the Open University earlier this year, and spent my summer working for the Brilliant Club. The Brilliant Club are a small but growing charity whose mission is to widen access to highly selective universities in schools serving low participation communities. They do this by placing postgraduate research students in schools to deliver small group university-style tutorials to pupils aged 10-18.
While most postgraduate research students teach one or two groups a week over the course of five weeks I taught five groups in four different schools in and around London. I took on this larger teaching load as I had already finished my PhD and was otherwise at a bit of a loose end.
I recently took part in a Research CafĆ© at Denbigh School in Milton Keynes as part of the Engaging opportunities project. Iād been invited to take part as members of the project team were aware of my public engagement with research work.
The structure of the cafƩ was similar to the CafƩ Scientifique events held across the country but instead of engaging members of the general public in scientific debate over a lattƩ in the local coffee shop or bar, this event was held at the school with an audience of Year 12 students, sipping coffee and eating biscuits.
The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) is running an Engaged Futures consultation.Ā Alongside, and partly in coordination with this consultation, the NCCPE have launched a blog (NCCPE's blog). Ā
The NCCPE teamĀ invited various stakeholders to contribute a post to the new blog as part of the Engaged Futures consultation.Ā Authors were asked to imagine a future for some aspect of engaged research.
My contribution was based on an imagined future forĀ postgraduate research and it titledĀ 'An engaging thesis'.Ā Ā The NCCPE team are keen to start a discussionĀ around these articles, which willĀ grow in number in the coming weeks,Ā soĀ feel free to comment, circulate, etc.