A Framework for Understanding the Nature of Questions Asked by Audience Participants at Science Cafés

Science Cafés are events designed as public engagement tools that create the opportunity for open dialogue between members of the general public and experts on the issue being discussed at the event. This study explores the nature of questions being asked by audience participants during discussion sessions of Science Café events. It was conducted by coding audio recordings of audience participant engagements at 41 Science Café events held between 2010 and 2019. The result of this analysis produced a novel taxonomic framework to describe audience participant behaviors in terms of their learning goals. This framework was evaluated by applying it to samples of Science Café question data selected by Science Café topic theme. Comparisons between question-asking behaviors for specific Science Café topics and overall trends in question-asking behaviors for all Science Cafés revealed significant changes in audience participant learning goals when asking questions at Science Cafés centered on different topic types. Implications for understanding Science Café audiences and potential developments for Science Café events as public science engagement tools are discussed.

STEM escape rooms for public engagement

Escape rooms are a relatively new cultural phenomenon, attracting a wide range of audiences to test their puzzle-solving skills. While this format has been trialled in an educational context, there has been little exploration of it as a tool for engagement. We ran a STEM-based escape room, open to the public, over five days at a science centre in Malta. This was an exploratory exercise to determine whether escape rooms could be successful in an informal science engagement context. Over seventy players attempted the game and completed our evaluation. Our results suggest that escape rooms can be used in engagement contexts as they provide a positive experience that encourages future interactions with science. They may also draw audiences not normally interested in science and help them engage with scientific content in a more accessible manner. Interestingly, players were able to persist in engaging with content they found difficult while still finding it enjoyable, which has implications for the science communication of complex topics. Finally, players perceived that they were able to learn science through the escape room, which may increase their self-efficacy.

A Decade of Incorporating Social Sciences in the Integrated Marine Biosphere Research Project (IMBeR): Much Done, Much to Do?

Successful management and mitigation of marine challenges depends on cooperation and knowledge sharing which often occurs across culturally diverse geographic regions. Global ocean science collaboration is therefore essential for developing global solutions. Building effective global research networks that can enable collaboration also need to ensure inter- and transdisciplinary research approaches to tackle complex marine socio-ecological challenges. To understand the contribution of interdisciplinary global research networks to solving these complex challenges, we use the Integrated Marine Biosphere Research (IMBeR) project as a case study. We investigated the diversity and characteristics of 1,827 scientists from 11 global regions who were attendees at different IMBeR global science engagement opportunities since 2009. We also determined the role of social science engagement in natural science based regional programmes (using key informants) and identified the potential for enhanced collaboration in the future. Event attendees were predominantly from western Europe, North America, and East Asia. But overall, in the global network, there was growing participation by females, students and early career researchers, and social scientists, thus assisting in moving toward interdisciplinarity in IMBeR research. The mainly natural science oriented regional programmes showed mixed success in engaging and collaborating with social scientists. This was mostly attributed to the largely natural science (i.e., biological, physical) goals and agendas of the programmes, and the lack of institutional support and push to initiate connections with social science. Recognising that social science research may not be relevant to all the aims and activities of all regional programmes, all researchers however, recognised the (potential) benefits of interdisciplinarity, which included broadening scientists’ understanding and perspectives, developing connections and interlinkages, and making science more useful. Pathways to achieve progress in regional programmes fell into four groups: specific funding, events to come together, within-programme-reflections, and social science champions. Future research programmes should have a strategic plan to be truly interdisciplinary, engaging natural and social sciences, as well as aiding early career professionals to actively engage in such programmes.

Towards Defining the Place and Role of Robotics MOOCs in ODeL

This paper focuses on the limited literature pertaining to robotics MOOCs within the STEM MOOC domain. This study provides a subset of an ongoing, more extensive systematic review of the recent advances with MOOCs to advance STEM education and engagement. The purpose of this study is to identify and discuss the place and role of robotics (as a subset of STEM) MOOCs in an open distance e-learning institution of higher education. The study provides insights into the research gaps existing in (1)literature, and (2)the domain of STEM MOOCs for robotics education and STEM engagement. The place and role of STEM MOOCs for the advancement of robotics within an open distance e-learning institution provide a practical and sustainable solution to science engagement in these times of Covid.