Engaging opportunities: a research café on ‘smart drugs’

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

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

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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