Category Archives: Events

Posts about events relating to Public Engagement with Research

Fly us to the moon…

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Diane Ford, Engaging Opportunities Project Manager

Diane Ford, Engaging Opportunities Project Manager

Engaging opportunties: Water rocket competition
In July 2013 five teams of six Year 9 students and one team of six Year 10 students from Slated Row Special School competed in a competition to launch water rockets. The teams, representing five schools from Milton Keynes, were judged on the distance the rockets flew, whether they could successful land an egg, and the design of their rockets.

The teams were supported on the day of the competition by Open University researchers, staff from Denbigh School and teachers from their home schools. The organising team included: Richard Holliman, Mike Bullivant, Vic Pearson, Kris Stutchbury, Peter Taylor, Mike Batham and me from the OU, and Andy Squires and Val Hawthorne from Denbigh School.

A panel of judges, including the Mayor of Milton Keynes Brian White and Professor Peter Taylor from the OU, assessed the entries. The team from Milton Keynes Academy were the winners, launching their rocket over 90m. They received a trophy, which was designed at Denbigh School. All the competitors received a replica of this trophy in the form of a key ring.

As Project Manager for the project I was responsible for the organisation from the Open University side of things, working closely with Val Hawthorne from Denbigh School.

Engaging Opportunities Water Rocket Competition; July 2013

Engaging Opportunities Water Rocket Competition; July 2013

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Communi-tea party at the academy

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Julie Bounford

Julie Bounford, University of East Anglia

The academy and community: seeking authentic voices inside higher education – A workshop on creating and sustaining an engaged research community

On 11th November 2013, I facilitated a small workshop where participants explored some of the essential building blocks for creating and sustaining a research community that cultivates and delivers engaged academic practice. The session focused on features outlined in my research poster. A pdf of the poster, ‘COMMUNI-TEA PARTY AT THE ACADEMY’ can be downloaded – here.

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Engaging opportunities: a research café on ‘smart drugs’

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Dr Ellie Dommett

Dr Ellie Dommett, The Open University

I recently took part in a Research Café at Denbigh School in Milton Keynes as part of the Engaging opportunities project. I’d been invited to take part as members of the project team were aware of my public engagement with research work.

The structure of the café was similar to the Café Scientifique events held across the country but instead of engaging members of the general public in scientific debate over a latté 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.

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Why technology-enhanced learning needs engagement

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Trevor Collins' seminar on technology-enhanced learning and engagement

Trevor Collins' seminar on technology-enhanced learning and engagement

Last Monday, I gave a talk on my research as part of the ‘engaging research’ seminar series associated with the RCUK funded Catalyst and SUPI projects. I explained why I think engagement is so important.

In my research, I try to identify the range of stakeholders in a given learning context that will be affected by the introduction of a technology. Through understanding the activities that the stakeholders are involved in, I try to develop technologies that will be used to facilitate learning without causing too much extra work for any individual stakeholder. By engaging, I hope to understand the stakeholders’ perspectives and where possible collaborate with them to create something they will find useful.

Here’s the video of the seminar along with the slides (including the cited references) and abstract…

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Science in Public 2013

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Science in the Public Conference 2013 Poster

Science in the Public Conference 2013 Poster

(with thanks to many prolific and interesting conference Tweeters)

This year was the seventh Science in Public conference and took place at the University of Nottingham, which is also the base for the Leverhulme Trust-funded Making Science Public project. There were over 120 participants from Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Portugal, the United States and the UK and more than 25 panel sessions on topics from responsible innovation to storytelling and public engagement to the dilemmas of making expertise public.

Sophia Collins
@sophiacol
Come to my #SIP13 session on storytelling. Stories! A ukulele! And a week-old baby!

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