Dissemination of Research: Your Interface with the Public

In January 2011, something very special happened on the UC Berkley campus as a result of a unique partnership between two organizations - KQED, a San Francisco public broadcaster and a public university, UC Berkeley. Nineteen graduate students from the UCB Department of Integrative Biology (IB) and Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management participated in a pilot project in which they were trained by media professionals in communicating their science to broader audiences. The class, called Dissemination of Research: Your Interface with the Public, was a two unit, seven week course on making media for science communication, a hands-on approach to the dos and don'ts of social media, blogging, photo collections, web media, video/audio interviews, visualizing data, and a survey of types of science media and journalism. The partnership itself was an extension of a project initiated by KQED in 2007. At that time, KQED launched QUEST, with the goal of contributing much needed reporting on science and the environment to Northern California audiences. The project combined an interdisciplinary media staff to create radio reports, television programming, original online media, and educator resources. Further supporting this innovative editorial framework were 16 partners including Northern California's leading science centers, museums, parks, and community-based groups. Among those partners were representatives from UC Berkeley's Natural History Museums and the Integrative Biology Department. The very name - Integrative Biology - reflects the focus of the department which brings together a diversity of disciplines that complement one another to unravel the complexity of biology thus a perfect match for the QUEST project. Building on the model developed for QUEST partner media making trainings, KQED and UC Berkeley decided to pilot a new venture by co-teaching a course, specifically aimed at helping graduate students communicate their science. Unlike similar courses that provide skills in writing press releases and tips for interviews, this one emphasized the making of media. Such a focus teaches students appropriate media formats for differing audiences and which factors make a presentation interesting and comprehensible. The course, beyond media training, required students to contribute to a weekly blog by writing about contemporary scientific research with the goal of making these findings relevant to an everyday audience. Students also produced a one-minute slide show combining photos, animation, music and narration to communicate their own research projects and areas of interest. At the end of the course, an evaluation was conducted to measure the usefulness of the class. Students rated the overall educational value of the course a 6.438 out of 7. They appreciated the interaction with media experts and the different perspectives about communicating science beyond that of scientists. In their words: "It is part of our job as scientists to be able to share our discoveries with the world and we never get trained on this, so we make a lot of mistakes."