Science communication for development

Posted on Wednesday, 21 October 2015 by Clare Kemp

Clare Kemp, The Open University.

I joined the Open University in October 2015 as a postgraduate researcher. Based in The Institute of Educational Technology my doctoral research is supervised by Richard Holliman, Eileen Scanlon and Patricia Murphy. My aim is to specialize in science communications for development.

To this end, I have been a science communications consultant across Africa and Asia, North America and the UK for many years, developing knowledge, skills and expertise that I’m planning to integrate into my postgraduate research.

Clare Kemp (far left), with a film crew, working with a scientist, extension workers and farmers.

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Children’s Science Television: Then And Now

Posted on Monday, 5 October 2015 by Sai Pathmanathan

Sai Pathmanathan. Photo: Huw James.

We all watched children’s television growing up, and many of us still do (for ‘research’ purposes!). Some of us watched children’s science and technology programmes, and can attribute particular shows or presenters as the reason for why we pursued a science (or STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics) career.

But these days, how effective is children’s science television? Back in the early ‘80s, children would come home from school, put down their lunchbox and sit in front of the television to watch one of four channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV or Channel 4) as part of children’s tea time programming. Now, audiences are much more fragmented – there are hundreds of television channels, everyone’s viewing via different devices and ‘on demand’ services. So, is television still the best method to get science to young audiences?

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The battle for engaged research

Posted on Monday, 7 September 2015 by Richard Holliman

Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University. Credit: Jane Perrone.

I’ve long admired the work of my colleague Professor Martin Weller. Studies conducted in the Institute of Educational Technology (IET), in particular research exploring the practices of digital scholarship, were central to the development of the Open University’s proposal to RCUK to become one of eight Public Engagement with Research Catalyst universities. Since that earlier work Martin has further explored ideas about openness in higher education, culminating in his latest book, The battle for open: How Openness Won and Why it Doesn’t Feel Like Victory.

We’ve recently completed the work of the OU’s RCUK-funded Public Engagement with Research (PER) Catalyst, An Open Research University, publishing our final report (Holliman, et al. 2015). As such, members of the OU’s PER Catalyst project team and I have spent recent months consolidating the learning from our project with the aim of sharing lessons learned and resources with other universities, including the RCUK Catalyst Seed Funded universities.

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Download and play the snakes and ladders of social media

Posted on Tuesday, 2 June 2015 by Ann Grand

Scroll down to the end of this post to download your copy of the snakes and ladders of social media.

Dr Ann Grand, The Open University

In May 2014, I began work with Helen Donelan and Clem Herman (Faculty of Mathematics, Communication & Technology) to create a workshop for the Open University’s 3rd Annual eSTEeM Conference.

Helen and I work in complementary areas: Helen in enhancing professional networking and engagement by exploring the activities of academics using social media; and me, as part of the Public Engagement with Research (PER) Catalyst, exploring researchers’ understanding of engaged research and how it is mediated through digital technologies.

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Engaging Environmental Research: developing productive partnerships with end-users

Posted on Wednesday, 6 May 2015 by Richard Holliman

Dr Richard Holliman, The Open University

In Spring 2015 we offered up to 30 NERC-funded postgraduate researchers (through the CENTA DTP), supervisors, and early-career researchers the opportunity to work on developing productive partnerships with the end-users of their environmental research, and to communicate the economic and social significance of their work.

Over the five days of this course NERC-funded researchers worked with me and Dr Clare Warren to explore conceptual issues, including: who are the end-users for your research, who could they be, and how do you best present your work in the public sphere to encourage end-users to work with you?

The researchers also developed and practiced new skills under the supervision of Dr Janet Sumner, Gerard Giorgi-Coll and Thomas Ryan, such as working with recording equipment, producing pieces-to-camera & editing footage.

What follows is a description of the first of three five-day workshops, which took place in January 2015. The post has been authored by Clare Lawson, Jonathan Moles, Bethan Parkes, Alan Radbourne and Kerry Reid. The post includes links to some of the videos the researchers produced. If you’d like to view the other videos you’ll find the all here.

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ON AIR – a sound installation

Posted on Monday, 23 March 2015 by Caroline Devine

Caroline Devine, Composer and Sound Artist

ON AIR was commissioned by the Open University to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Harold Wilson’s University of the Air speech. Four artists were commissioned, one in each of the UK’s component nations, each with a different remit in terms of the academic knowledge to be represented. I was selected to make the work for the English commission, the theme of which was Design and Technology.

I conceived ON AIR as a multi-channel sound installation that would form an acoustic layer throughout the campus. I wanted to present fragments of the knowledge, ideas and voices of the Open University floating throughout the campus – as though vestiges of the output of the OU are always present on the air currents throughout the site and are made temporarily audible by the work. By using a large number of hidden sound sources, the work would completely transform the experience of the space without visual trace.

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New! Research Data Catalogue

Posted on Monday, 23 February 2015 by Isabel Chadwick

This post was originally posted on The Orb, the Open University’s open research blog, by Isabel Chadwick, Research Data Management Librarian at the Open University

The Research Data Management project is working to build a suite of tools which will enable OU researchers to manage, share, publish and archive their research data. I am pleased to announce that the first tool in this suite, the Research Data Catalogue is now live.

The Research Data Catalogue is facilitated by a new item type – “Research Dataset Record” – in ORO, the OU’s institutional repository. At this stage, ORO can only accept records which describe research datasets (what they are and how they can be accessed) the datasets themselves should not be deposited in ORO.

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Imagining scientists in popular culture

Posted on Friday, 19 September 2014 by Denbigh Students

By Francesca Brooking and Nicole Luwaca

Back in July this year, we were part of a group of ten students selected to participate in a week long attachment at the Open University. Our aim at the start of the week was to produce two short films, exploring how scientists have been represented in popular culture. To do this, we split into two groups; each group produced one film.

Students from Denbigh Teaching School: l-r Tom Andrews, Jamie Buckingham, Cameron Edwardson, Michael O’Brien, Hashim Diriye, Yolanda Etrata, Jodie Wilkinson, Francesca Brooking, Nicole Luwaca and Lauren Billings

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San Francisco calls: please vote for us

Posted on Tuesday, 9 September 2014 by Hayley Keen

Hayley Keen, The Open University

As postgraduate researchers at the Open University with an interest in communication and engagement, Frazer Bird and I are looking for your support. We’ve entered a video competition and we’ve been selected as finalists.

To win the prize – a trip for four people to the biggest geosciences conference in the world – our videos must receive the most likes on You Tube so we need all the help we can get.

If you’d like to know more about the type of research we do as paleoecologists, and to help one of our dreams come true, please follow the links in our post and like and share the videos. Read on for further details…

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Walton High students show star qualities

Posted on Tuesday, 5 August 2014 by Richard Holliman

Professor Richard Holliman, The Open University. Credit: Jane Perrone.

Students from Walton High, a school in Milton Keynes, have been finding out that the sky is definitely not the limit when it comes to research at The Open University (OU).

In late July, as part of their digital media production course, ten BTEC students visited the OU campus to find out more about its work on Europe’s comet-chasing spacecraft Rosetta – the world’s first mission to land on a comet.

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Engaging Research

An Open Research University: Embedding public engagement within the research culture of the OU

Category Archives: Communication

Science communication for development

Children’s Science Television: Then And Now

The battle for engaged research

Engaging Environmental Research: developing productive partnerships with end-users

ON AIR – a sound installation

New! Research Data Catalogue

Imagining scientists in popular culture

San Francisco calls: please vote for us

Walton High students show star qualities