COMMUNICATING SCIENCE TO A LAY AUDIENCE COMMUNICATING BEYOND

COMMUNICATING SCIENCE TO A LAY AUDIENCE

COMMUNICATING BEYOND YOUR DISCIPLINE • In graduate school, you are striving to make your work “disciplined” by studying in a specific disciplinary field • It is a big challenge to learn how to speak the language and the jargon of your discipline • At the same time, you must learn how to communicate what you do to a non-disciplinary audience • What are some approaches you have tried? How successful have they been?

STORY • The most successful researchers know how to tell their research story • Story has a dramatic arc!: Issue, Complication, Climax, Resolution • Telling a research story involves different approaches for different audiences

JOURNAL ARTICLE • Writing a paper about your research involves following a very specific research story pattern • Tell the story of the existing literature (literature review) • Define a gap and make the case that filling this gap in existing knowledge is a worthy task • Show your project fills the gap • Provide the results and point toward the next gap

GRANT APPLICATION • A grant application involves a research story similar to that in a journal article with one major difference: you usually cannot write to an audience of disciplinary peers • Avoid jargon; instead use everyday language • When it is not possible to avoid jargon, you must carefully define your terms • Read the call for proposals very carefully and repeatedly as you draft your proposal • Consider how the requirements constrain your focus, but also consider how the requirements leave room for your research story

COMMUNICATING WITH THE PUBLIC • When you tell your research story outside an academic context, you must humanize your work • Put it on a human scale – think about what you can see and touch and how you might describe your work on molecules and cells within the experiential order of maginitude • Use human experience – talk about human experiences related to your research • Be careful not to “dumb it down” – instead think of ways you might teach important fundamental concepts while not getting lost in the weeds of the most isoteric areas of your work

COMMUNICATING WITH THE PUBLIC • Use metaphor, simile, and representative language appropriately – don’t stretch a metaphor too far • Tell a human story with fully-realized people who have emotions and struggles • Use illustrations • Make connections • Be rhetorical

PRACTICE • Keep a blog • Talk to your family and friends • Talk to strangers • Be creative • Take a course: • RHET: 7930 (Writing in the Discipines) • RHET: 7940 (Public Speaking for Academics) *in the spring

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE RHET: 7500 • 2 (or 3) semester hours • Project oriented class • Blog posts and classwork (10%) • One Button Video (10%) • Initial project plan (10%) • Faculty interview (10%) • Midterm project plan (10%) • TED-inspired video (10%) • Final project (40%)