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Enhancing STEM Academics' Public Engagement Skills

Lead Institution: University of Bristol
Collaborating with: Graphic Science, Lighting Up Learning Ltd

Adopter Universities - Enhancing Public Engagement

Due to the success of the Enhancing STEM Academics' Public Engagement Skills project at the University of Bristol, the project leaders gained additional funds as part of the National HE STEM Programme's Practice Transfer Adopters scheme to transfer the project to other universities.

Seven institutions were successful in their bids to adopt project activity as follows:


The Adoption Process

Over a five month period, delegates from the seven institutions attended three whole day seminars hosted by Ed Drewitt and Nic Garrick, the original project leads for the Enhancing STEM Academics' Public Engagement Skills project. In between seminars, delegates were supported with advice and additional materials through a project blog. 

The project leads have written a meta-evaluation which captures the adoption process and which draws out the key learning from, and impact at, the adopter universities. This meta-evaluation can be downloaded below:

Public Engagement Adopters - Meta-evaluation

The seminars covered the following areas:

Seminar (1)

  • Setting the scene - What are schools up to? Understanding what schools are doing and how we can better work with them
  • Delivering a school workshop - The Bristol Dinosaur Project
  • Looking forward to our next seminar - What do you offer already? What can you offer? Expertise / staffing / resources

A powerpoint from the day can be accessed below:

Seminar (1)

Seminar (2)

  • What could your offer include? Using learning outcomes in the first stage of developing a workshop; starting to structure your offer; learning cycles; example of a volcano workshop
  • Create learning cycles for your own offers 
  • Create specific workshop structures

An agenda from the day can be downloaded below:

Seminar (2)

Seminar (3)

  • Firming up your offer to schools. Creating marketing materials and advertising to schools; top tips for contacting schools; ways of involving teachers
  • Sustaining your offer and evaluating your activities. Recruiting and training volunteers; achieving buy-in from peers and senior managers; evaluation techniques

An agenda from the day can be downloaded below:

Seminar (3)

Staff involved

Ed Drewitt
Project lead, University of Bristol

Claire Dimond
Graphic Science

Nicholas Garrick
Lighting Up Learning Ltd