Jaclyn A. Madden, Associate Professor at Hartford Community College, was the speaker at ASMCUE 2022 for the microbrew entitled “Undergraduates as Science Communicators: How to Engage Students in SciComm.” Jackie Madden teaches biotechnology. Madden defined “SciComm” as how scientists explain science to non-scientists. Effective SciComm requires letting go of technical jargon and benefits students as a professional skill and learning strategy. Madden spoke about the pandemic and sources of inspiration for this SciComm project they implemented in the courses they teach. The project has the learning objectives:
- Evaluate sources of scientific information.
- Conduct research using good sources of scientific information.
- Develo a SciComm project explaining a scientific concept to a non-scientist audience.
Madden provides examples and the CLIPS Planning Tool and website from the University of Queensland. This planning tool exercise is used to provide feedback (formative assessment). The genre option includes a blog between 300-1500 words that explains the science in a conversational style. The second genre option is an infographic to visually communicate scientific information using icons, illustrations, and data visualization.The third genre option is a Twitter thread with up to four tweets and a creative hashtag. The last option is a three-minute scientist video with three slides. Madden explained a student’s creative video. Madden has created rubrics for each of the options. During the discussion section of the session, Madden answered questions about how they provide resources on what is an infographic or blog and examples. Madden described how they use the rubrics and the CLIPS Planning Tool in every course with a SciComm component. Importantly, Madden stated that “students rise to the occasion” and become owners of their projects and motivated to complete them successfully. While the CLIPS site has information about communicating science, Madden did mention that there isn’t a central repository that they know of and use. I will now search for CLIPS and the planning tool, as this sounds useful of our public science project!
