Teaching Scicomm to Marie Curie PhD students

I might worry a bit excessively before and be afraid that I won’t be able to give an interesting talk or teach students anything, but then while I’m doing it and afterwards I realize that I really enjoy it. Teaching. Its been a year now since the public health masters course in Public Health Science Communication at University of Copenhagen took off. Since it finished in December 2012 I have only taught science communication a few times. Last week I got a new dosage of interaction with students to discuss the communication of science. I was invited to give an introduction to science communication to a group of 14 PhD students under the Marie Curie Actions Initial Training Networks (ITN). The students all had a background in biology (or similar) and were just into the second year of their PhD. Most of them (if not all) were deep into lab science and were working at the smallest possible scale of the human cell and genetic materials. In my experience lab scientists often represents one of the most challenging group of researchers when it comes to arguing for why the should communicate science. Not because they don’t recognize it as necessary and useful, but primarily because they find it almost impossible to explain what it is they do. Overall these students were not much different. Focus on you! I had three hours at hand on what was equal to a Friday afternoon for the 14 students who after two weeks of presentations, social events and classes where lookin...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Tags: public health science communication Lab science Marie Curie Actions PhD students radiolab research communication science communication @en Social media the great sperm race writing tip Source Type: blogs