Assessing Motivations and Barriers to Science Outreach within Academia: A Mixed-Methods Survey

The practice of science outreach is more necessary than ever. However, a disconnect exists between the stated goals for science outreach and its actual impact. In order to examine one potential source of this disconnect, we undertook a survey-based study to explore whether barriers to participation (either intrinsic or extrinsic) in science outreach exist within the academic community. We received responses to our survey from 530 individuals, the vast majority of whom engage in some type of science outreach activity on an annual basis. Those who engage in outreach report doing so for both personal and altruistic reasons, and having high (yet varied) levels of comfort with performing outreach activities. Respondents also report the existence of several significant yet surmountable barriers to participation, including lack of time and funding. Our findings demonstrate that both levels of participation in, and attitudes toward, science outreach within the academic community are generally favorable, suggesting that the general ineffectiveness of science outreach is due to other causes. We place our findings within the context of the broader science outreach, science communication and public engagement literature. We make recommendations on how existing approaches and infrastructure can, and must, be changed in order to improve the practice.

Transferring Ethnopharmacological Results Back to Traditional Healers in Rural Indigenous Communities – The Ugandan Greater Mpigi Region Example

In ethnopharmacology, scientists often survey indigenous communities to identify and collect natural remedies such as medicinal plants that are yet to be investigated pharmacologically in a laboratory setting. The Nagoya Protocol provided international agreements on financial benefit sharing. However, what has yet only been poorly defined in these agreements are the non-financial benefits for local intellectual property right owners, such as traditional healers who originally provided the respective ethnomedicinal information. Unfortunately, ethnopharmacologists still rarely return to local communities. In this video article, the authors present a method for transferring results back to traditional healers in rural indigenous communities, taking the authors’ previous studies among 39 traditional healers in Uganda as an example. The authors’ approach is based on a two-day workshop, and the results are presented as original footage in the video article. The authors’ work demonstrated a successful method for ensuring bidirectional benefit and communication while fostering future scientific and community-work collaborations. The authors believe it is the moral duty of ethnopharmacologists to contribute to knowledge transfer and feedback once a study is completed. The workshop method, as an example for science outreach, might also be regarded as a valuable contribution to research on education theory and science communication.

Science communication in the international auxiliary language Esperanto

<p>First published in 1887 by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, Esperanto is the most successful constructed language, with speakers all around the globe and even native speakers.</p> <p>The relationship between Esperanto and science starts very early: the scientific journal <em>Internacia Scienca Revuo</em> was created in 1904 and the International Esperantist Science Association (ISAE) was founded in 1907 (Wera Blanke, <em>Scienca Revuo</em> 206, 2006). Many publications and books about scientific topics have since been written or translated in Esperanto. </p> <p>Esperanto has initially been envisioned as a lingua franca to be used in international communication, both in general and for scientific purposes. While English has since taken this role, there is still a desire to maintain and develop the scientific culture and the related terminology in Esperanto. Science outreach is one way to achieve this goal, and new projects have appeared in the last few years.</p> <p>Esperanto represents an interesting challenge for outreach : being a more neutral language, not related to a specific country or ethnic group, the community of speakers (albeit small) is by essence more international and more diverse than in national languages. This is an opportunity, but also comes with some difficulties.</p> <p>In this work, I’ll discuss the advantages and obstacles of communicating science in Esperanto. I’ll present various projects of science communication in Esperanto, with a focus on my personal experience with my YouTube channel <em>D-ro Loĉjo</em>, where I do videos about science and in particular about planetary science.</p>

Astronomy for Development actions in the context of long-standing refugee situations: the "Amanar: under the same sky" initiative

<p>"Amanar: under the same sky" is a science outreach project organized by GalileoMobile, the Asociación Canaria de Amistad con el Pueblo Saharaui (ACAPS) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), with the aim to support and inspire the Sahrawi community from the refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, using Astronomy. The initiative pays special attention to Sahrawi children and youth to awaken their interest in science and stimulate their imagination and critical thinking. The project also promotes mutual understanding and cultural exchange through the study and preservation of the Saharawi rich astronomical traditions and knowledge of the sky. Amanar was selected as a “Special Project” of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) centenary celebrations, and has received funding from the IAU Office of Astronomy for Development and the Europlanet Funding Scheme. It counts with the support and collaboration of international astronomical institutions and a significant number of local partners.</p> <p>The first part was developed in three of the Canary Islands in summer 2019. It combined visits to the professional observatories with educational activities about the Universe and astronomical observations for the Sahrawi children who spend every summer in the islands together with Spanish families, within the long-standing “Holidays in Peace” program. The second part took place in October 2019, when a team of astrophysicists, science communicators and filmmakers visited the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf to promote Astronomy outreach activities in schools and donate telescopes and educational materials. Teacher workshops were also organized to encourage educators to use Astronomy as a didactic tool and contribute to the improvement of the quality of education in the region.</p> <p>As a reaction to the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020, the project provided follow-up capacity building for Sahrawi teachers through a pilot online training programme through WhatsApp, which is efficient to low internet connection and easier to use in their mobile phones. The program content was co-created with the teachers to ensure that was relevant to them. In total, 635 children, 83 teachers and 150 people from the general public participated in all the project activities. In addition, thanks to a collaboration with the Sahrawi Oral History Department, a series of interviews were organized with elders about their Astronomical knowledge. In 2021 we are expanding this study by awarding internships to young Sahrawi people, who will be trained on Ethnoastronomy and ethnographic data collection, so they are the ones leading the process of preserving their own culture and history.</p> <p>In this talk, we will present the outcomes and best practices learned from the project so far, the planned actions to ensure long-term sustainability along with future visits to the camps. We will also discuss the global impact of this type of initiatives in the framework of Astronomy for Development.</p>