Shivni Rashmi, Cline Christina, Newport Morgan, Yuan Shupei, Bergan-Roller Heather E
Department of Biological Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Northern Illinois University, 447 Montgomery Hall, DeKalb, IL 60115 USA.
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA.
Int J STEM Educ. 2021;8(1):47. doi: 10.1186/s40594-021-00304-0. Epub 2021 Jul 23.
Seminal reports, based on recommendations by educators, scientists, and in collaboration with students, have called for undergraduate curricula to engage students in some of the same practices as scientists-one of which is communicating science with a general, non-scientific audience (SciComm). Unfortunately, very little research has focused on helping students develop these skills. An important early step in creating effective and efficient curricula is understanding what baseline skills students have prior to instruction. Here, we used the Essential Elements for Effective Science Communication (EEES) framework to survey the SciComm skills of students in an environmental science course in which they had little SciComm training.
Our analyses revealed that, despite not being given the framework, students included several of the 13 elements, especially those which were explicitly asked for in the assignment instructions. Students commonly targeted broad audiences composed of interested adults, aimed to increase the knowledge and awareness of their audience, and planned and executed remote projects using print on social media. Additionally, students demonstrated flexibility in their skills by slightly differing their choices depending on the context of the assignment, such as creating more engaging content than they had planned for.
The students exhibited several key baseline skills, even though they had minimal training on the best practices of SciComm; however, more support is required to help students become better communicators, and more work in different contexts may be beneficial to acquire additional perspectives on SciComm skills among a variety of science students. The few elements that were not well highlighted in the students' projects may not have been as intuitive to novice communicators. Thus, we provide recommendations for how educators can help their undergraduate science students develop valuable, prescribed SciComm skills. Some of these recommendations include helping students determine the right audience for their communication project, providing opportunities for students to try multiple media types, determining the type of language that is appropriate for the audience, and encouraging students to aim for a mix of communication objectives. With this guidance, educators can better prepare their students to become a more open and communicative generation of scientists and citizens.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40594-021-00304-0.
基于教育工作者、科学家的建议并与学生合作得出的开创性报告呼吁本科课程让学生参与一些与科学家相同的实践活动——其中之一是与普通的非科学受众进行科学交流（科学传播）。不幸的是，很少有研究专注于帮助学生培养这些技能。创建有效且高效课程的重要早期步骤是了解学生在接受教学之前具备哪些基础技能。在此，我们使用有效科学传播基本要素（EEES）框架对一门环境科学课程中的学生的科学传播技能进行了调查，在该课程中他们几乎没有接受过科学传播方面的培训。
我们的分析表明，尽管未被告知该框架，但学生纳入了13个要素中的几个，尤其是作业说明中明确要求的那些要素。学生通常将目标受众定位为感兴趣的成年人组成的广泛群体，旨在增加受众的知识和意识，并利用社交媒体上的印刷品策划和执行远程项目。此外，学生根据作业的背景略微改变他们的选择，展示了他们技能的灵活性，比如创作比原计划更具吸引力的内容。
尽管学生在科学传播的最佳实践方面接受的培训很少，但他们展现出了几项关键的基础技能；然而，需要更多支持来帮助学生成为更好的传播者，并且在不同背景下开展更多工作可能有助于从各类理科学生中获取关于科学传播技能的更多观点。在学生项目中未得到充分体现的少数要素对于新手传播者来说可能不那么直观。因此，我们就教育工作者如何帮助他们的本科理科学生培养有价值的、规定的科学传播技能提供了建议。其中一些建议包括帮助学生确定其传播项目的合适受众，为学生提供尝试多种媒体类型的机会，确定适合受众的语言类型，以及鼓励学生追求多种传播目标的组合。有了这些指导，教育工作者可以更好地让他们的学生做好准备，成为更开放、更善于交流的一代科学家和公民。
在线版本包含可在10.1186/s40594 - 021 - 00304 - 0获取的补充材料。
