Opening up opportunities for creativity through media training

Posted on by
Denbigh School Students participating in the media training

Year 12 Denbigh School Students, from left to right: Tiffany Dudden, Alice Rose, Eleanor Papworth, Emma Holland, Georgie Rush, Heather Stone, Sasha Russell, Alex Dejean and Connor Bean

From the 1st to 5th July 2013 10 media students from Denbigh School participated in a Media Training Course at the Open University as part of the RCUK-funded Engaging opportunities project. The training was led by staff from the OU’s Open Media Unit.

Over the five days of this practical course the students developed and practised new skills, such as working with digital tools and technologies, producing pieces to camera, and editing footage. Six short films were produced over the course of the week. Here three of the students—Alice Rose, Connor Bean and Heather Stone—describe their experiences. Links to the completed films are embedding throughout the post.

Continue reading →

Focus Group-based Public Engagement

Posted on by

This post was originally contributed to the Isotope repository on 14th August 2008 by Eric Jensen at the University of Warwick and has been reposted here.

Dr Eric Jensen, University of Warwick

Dr Eric Jensen, University of Warwick

Activity description
Traditionally used by market researchers and social scientists to identify a range of interpretations on a topic of interest, focus groups have recently been adapted by at least two independent teams of public engagement practitioners with the aim of generating dialogue about robotics and health. This article describes the mechanics of planning, design and moderation of focus-group based public engagement events, making reference to these two cases, which were evaluated as part of the Isotope project.

Continue reading →

Engaging opportunities: a research café on ‘smart drugs’

Posted on by
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.

Continue reading →

Engaged Futures consultation and NCCPE blog

Posted on by
NCCPE Blog post: An Engaging thesis

NCCPE Blog post: An Engaging thesis

The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) is running an Engaged Futures consultation.  Alongside, and partly in coordination with this consultation, the NCCPE have launched a blog (NCCPE’s blog).  

The NCCPE team invited various stakeholders to contribute a post to the new blog as part of the Engaged Futures consultation.  Authors were asked to imagine a future for some aspect of engaged research.

My contribution was based on an imagined future for postgraduate research and it titled ‘An engaging thesis‘.  The NCCPE team are keen to start a discussion around these articles, which will grow in number in the coming weeks, so feel free to comment, circulate, etc.

Why technology-enhanced learning needs engagement

Posted on by
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…

Continue reading →

Science in Public 2013

Posted on by
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!

Continue reading →

Participation Now, a new public engagement with research pilot project

Posted on by
Participation Now website screen image

Participation Now website

Participation Now is a new and experimental public engagement with research pilot, recently launched on The Open University’s OpenLearn platform. This pilot emerges out of work undertaken by Nick Mahony and Hilde Stephansen under the auspices of the Catalyst and Creating Publics projects and as a result of an ongoing collaboration with the OpenLearn team.

For more background and information about this pilot click here.

Dr Ann Grand – Research Associate (Digital Engagement)

Posted on by
Dr Ann Grand

Dr Ann Grand

Role

Ann was a part-time Research Associate on the Catalyst project. She is now based at the Univeristy of Western Australia where she lectures in Science Communication.

Ann investigated aspects of researchers’ practice in digital engagement and how public engagement with research can be supported and facilitated through digital technologies. During her time at the OU Ann was based in the Institute of Educational Technology, working with Dr Anne Adams, Dr Trevor Collins, Dr Richard Holliman and Prof Eileen Scanlon.

Continue reading →