Communicating Science to the Public

Kenyon College Natural Science Division
Summer Communication Groups
Week 1 – Short talks

Objective: Students start to learn how to effectively talk about their research to non-scientists.
Main activity: Role-playing exercises that ask students to talk about their work in different contexts.
Toolkit:

  • Role-playing scenarios:

    • Thanksgiving. Everyone is drowsy after a big meal. Imagine that your uncle asks you about your research. Describe your work in a way that keeps everyone from falling asleep.
    • Cocktail party. You’re at a cocktail party and someone you’re interested in asks you about your research. If you don’t say something interesting in the first 60 seconds, your crush is going to walk away and join another conversation. Or, imagine that a member of the Kenyon Board of Trustees ask you about your research at a cocktail party.
    • Elevator. You’re at a conference and one of the leading researchers in the field steps onto the hotel elevator with you. You have until the 30th floor to pitch your work in a way that might land you a position in her lab. 
    • Kindergarten class. Your local elementary school asks you to talk about your work to their kindergartners. Better say something interesting or you’ll become a paper airplane target. 
  • Extensions
    • Involve the listeners
      • Require listeners to ask questions
      • Ask listeners to repeat what the speaker said
      • Play the telephone game – X tells Y, Y tells Z, Z tells X. 
      • Pairs brainstorm “hooks”
    • Ask students to contemplate how context affects what they say
      • Audience
      • Purpose of the communication
      • Format – poster, chalktalk, powerpoint, etc.
    • Discuss tactics for making a short oral talk engaging
      • Use a personalized style
      • Make the motivation clear
        • Why this project? 
        • What do you like about doing science?
      • Use analogies, especially gut-level or real-life ones
      • Use humor and irony
      • Discuss incidents and anecdotes
      • Tell a story using classic storytelling motifs (heroes, villains, etc)
      • Discuss real world applications
      • Ask questions to engage the audience
      • Discuss the history of your line of work
      • Show an artifact or object or visual aid 
      • Sell a bigger story that matters to you (i.e. the environment or health)

 

Kenyon College Natural Science Division
Summer Communication Groups
Week 2 – What works (and doesn’t)

Objective: Students develop an appreciation for strategies that work well for communicating with general audiences.
Homework: Students bring one example of good or bad writing (1-2 pages) targeted at a general audience. We send out a TED video that everyone watches before coming. We each bring copies of a short piece of writing for the general public.
Main activity: Discussion about what works well and what doesn’t work well in communications towards a general audience.
Toolkit:

 

Summer Communication Groups
Week 3 – Freewriting
Objective: Students transition from oral to written communication


Main activity: Students perform, share and edit freewrites.
Toolkit:

  • Freewrite
    • General freewriting guidelines:
      • Write for 5-15 minutes without stopping
      • Do not reread while you are writing
      • Do not correct or cross out mistakes
      • If your train of thought runs out in one direction, start over with something else 
      • Don’t be such as scientist – go for gut-level thinking 
      • The objective is to uncover ideas, not to produce a polished product
    • First prompt: “What are you excited, nervous, surprised, or scared about this summer?”
      • 5 minutes
      • Each participant reports
      • Talk about freewriting. What is its value?
        • Get started
        • Brainstorm ideas
        • Learn to write more conversationally
    • Second prompt
      • 10 minutes: “Why should anyone care about your summer work?”
      • Find one idea in your freewrite worth follow-up
      • Share with the group
  • • Sharing and extensions
    • If you could only share one sentence from your freewrite, which would it be?
    • Did anything surprising, compelling, revealing or provocative arise from your freewrite?
    • Pick the most interesting idea from your first freewrite and do another short freewrite with it as the prompt
    • Additional prompts
      • Any of the roleplaying scenarios from week 1 can be used to motivate a freewrite
      • Write about a humorous, surprising, and/or exciting incident that occurred during your research. 
      • What part of your work speaks to the “gut” (rather than the mind)?
      • Use a “real-world” analogy to describe some aspect of your work.

 

Summer Communication Groups
Week 4 – Draft workshop
Objective: Students get feedback on a short essay


Homework: Bring a 300-500 word draft of an essay describing your research to the general public
Main activity: Peer-review of drafts
Tool kit:

  • Guidelines for peer review
    • Point out strengths first – this can be the most useful feedback
    • Focus on the “big picture” first, minor edits are fine but should be secondary 
    • Discuss your reaction
      • Show your interest 
        • “I want to know more about ______.”
        • “This peaked my interest”
      • Indicate areas of confusion
        • “I don’t understand what you mean by ______.”
        • “I can’t understand how ____ connects to _____.”
    • Ask questions
      • “Does this mean that ________?”
      • “How does this relate to ________?”
      • “Why did you decide to _______?”
  • Edit
    • What are the one or two best parts of the essay? Revise with those as the focus.
    • Take a 500 word essay and condense to 300 words.
    • Read your own essay aloud.


Developed by Kenyon College faculty with support from the GLCA New Directions Initiative and the Kenyon
College Provost’s Office.

Search Kenyon

Website
Directory
Join our path forward.
Give To Kenyon
Loading