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The idea they can speak to a real psychologist kinda blows their mind. They read about studies in books but don’t see those researchers as actual people

Teacher, Society Zone, June 2018

Download and read the full report (PDF)

In 2018 the British Psychological Society (BPS) agreed to fund multiple IAS psychology zones each year, where students across the UK connect with psychologists and BPS members.

Below are the main findings from evaluating the zones funded by the British Psychological Society between June 2018 and March 2019.

Download the report: BPS Psychology Zones: Annual Summary Report 2018-19 [PDF]

Six psychology zones were run across three events:

• June 2018: Society Zone; Wellbeing Zone
• November 2018: Childhood Zone; Memory Zone
• March 2019: Perception Zone; Relationships Zone

BPS members and other psychologists are keen to take part. 37 psychologists took part, answering students’ questions and taking part in live chats:

• 68 BPS members applied to take part.
• 35 psychologists were given places in BPS funded zones; 24 were BPS
  members.
• 2 BPS members took part in additional (non-BPS funded) zone

69% of students talking to the psychologists were from widening participation or underserved schools.

Demand from teachers for classes was double the space available.

The topic of psychology, the specific zone themes, and the psychologists’ different fields of research and their work were all popular topics of discussion in the zones.

Students were also interested in the topic of being a psychologist with discussions around ethics and research participants; as well as the topic of mental health conditions, with questions about ways people can improve their mental health, as well as more specific questions to those psychologists whose work related directly to mental health.

“I have learnt that taking psychology as a GCSE in a couple of years will help me develop my knowledge and will give me a greater ability to become a doctor.” — Student, November 2018

Students and teachers report that taking part in IAS helps to improve students’ attitudes and motivations towards STEM, and careers and further education in STEM

“There were questions that really challenged me as a scientist and reminded me why I love this job … As scientists sometimes we forget about the myriad of questions that haven’t been  nswered, and it was great to have students remind us about them.” — Vassilis, psychologist

Psychologists report that taking part in IAS improved communication skills and gave psychologists a broader understanding of how young people view psychology and science.

£3,000 in prize money was distributed among the six zone winners (four of whom are BPS members) to be spent on further public engagement with psychology.

Click to download the Science of Learning Zone 2018, Evaluation Report [PDF]

The Science of Learning Zone was a place for teachers to send questions to, and have conversations with neuroscientists, psychologists and education researchers on topics around the science of learning.

This report summarises the project, and the impact on teachers, participants and researchers.

Download the report: The Science of Learning Zone 2018, Evaluation Report [PDF]

1. The Zone attracted teachers: 87% of registered users were school teachers — two-thirds of whom had more than 10 years experience of teaching — or were involved professionally in education. 54% of the 2,220 visitors who completed a pop-up question without registering declared themselves to be teachers.
2. Registered teachers told us they knew about education research but not about neuroscience and psychology. They were hoping to improve their confidence as a professional (86%) and make more informed decisions about teaching (89%). Those teachers who responded to the post-activity survey told us they benefited as expected.
3. Site page views were double the 2015 levels, though spread over a longer period, and site engagement was at a similar level to 2015. This was disappointing to the project team. We expected much higher levels.
4. We asked teachers about their reasons for engaging or not. Those who had registered, but did not ask a question or participate in a live chat seemed to be happy as passive consumer of information. Topic summaries were viewed 4,064 times. Teachers told us they enjoyed the live chat transcripts and the ability to dip in and out as it suited their time availability. Those teachers who had shown an interest but did not register or engage with the site mostly stated that they didn’t have the time to participate. We also got the impression that when compared to 2015 there were many more opportunities for teachers to satisfy their curiosity about research.
5. The project team is disappointed by the level of engagement. It is not commensurate with the investment from Wellcome, and nor with the effort made by all members of the team. However it is clear that the concept does attract the right people for the right reasons and gives them the right benefits. It is possible that the engagement levels we saw reflect the interest from teachers at the moment and we need to find the correct, lower level of resource required to meet that demand.

Download the report: The Science of Learning Zone 2018, Evaluation Report [PDF]

Click to read the full report

In 2014, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) agreed to support I’m a Scientist over 3 years. Each year, they fund 9 zones across the UK and Ireland. Part of the arrangement is that we include five RSC members in general zones across the year to show school students the full breadth of science.

Below is a summary of our main findings after evaluating the 9 RSC funded zones of I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here 2016.

1. Scientists improved their science communication skills and enjoyed an invigorating experience:
   “Taking part in this competition has reminded me why I love science, and I shall return to my research with renewed enthusiasm!” – Steve Street, chemist, Drug Discovery Zone

2. The zones saw a great number of conversations around chemistry themes with keywords like “climate change”, “toxic”, “enzymes”, “battery”, “drug”, “energy”, “bacteria” being prominent in questions and live chats.

3. 30 RSC members took part in I’m a Scientist thanks to this funding agreement. 25 took part in the 8 RSC funded themed zones and another 5 were spread across 2 general science zones.

4. 8 RSC members were voted winners in the 9 RSC funded zones in 2016 and will continue to promote their research in chemistry with their £500 prize money.

5. Widening participation in schools: 125 schools got a place to take part in I’m a Scientist RSC funded zones in 2016 the UK and Ireland. Of these, 31 (25%) were rural or Widening Participation schools, an improvement from last year, where 17% fulfilled this condition.

What students and teachers said about taking part:

Participating in this program, was a useful way to enhance my knowledge in my areas of interest…The scientists have all helped me to answer questions that I have been asking other people for a very long time. However, the major difference was that on this platform I received answers that clearly and fully answered all of my questions. Overall, this has been exceptionally useful to me and I look forward to more activities like this…” – Student, Antibiotics Zone

I’ve learnt how the children enjoy engaging with scientists and finding out about the world around them. An enjoyable, memorable learning experience”– Teacher, Climate Change Zone

Despite the success of the zones in 2016, due to changes in strategy decided by the Council of the RSC, the Society will not be funding the event in 2017 as planned. However, there are 94 Royal Society of Chemistry members registered on our scientist lists, waiting to take part in I’m a Scientist, and chemistry topics are the most popular among teachers. This change in strategy from the Royal Society of Chemistry means that the strong demand for online engagement with chemistry will be left unanswered this year.

Read more in the full report here

In 2013, we received an STFC Large Award to engage students with STFC research in 27 I’m a Scientist and I’m an Engineer zones over three years. During this time, we’ve measured every activity we’ve run, and we have stopped to look more closely at aspects like widening participation, or the impact of the events in researchers and students.

The STFC has been one of our most important funders, after the Wellcome Trust, in the last three years. This is a summary of how the collaboration has impacted I’m a Scientist and I’m an Engineer:

• 135 scientists and engineers have engaged with 10,602 students from all around the UK between June 2013 and March 2016.

• STFC zones reached a diverse set of students. 276 teachers, from 242 different schools geographically spread around the UK took part. Of these schools, 15% of them are Widening Participation schools.

• Students and teachers leave positive comments on I’m a Scientist and I’m an Engineer. But as fans of evaluation and data, we have used pre and post event questionnaires for the students to measure how taking part affects their attitudes towards STEM. We have actually seen how the more active students are on the site, the more positive the change in attitude observed.

I have learnt how fascinating science can be and the wonders of space.(…) I now know science can be cheesy but you can discover things that you have never know before (…). I am very happy that I was able to take part in this chat” – student, Gravity Zone March 2016

• I’m a Scientist and I’m an Engineer are good starting points for science communication. The scientists who did very little public engagement before taking part increased their number of outreach activities from an average of 1.6 activities per year, to 3.7 activities after the event. Scientists like Clara Nellist, who took part in 2014, are now putting a great emphasis on the communication side of their science careers:

After seeing how much you can do online, I was motivated to find more ways I could use the internet to communicate the research at CERN. Now I even manage all of the social media for my experiment, ATLAS.” – Clara Nellist, scientist

• We have distributed £13,000 to 26 zone winners, 24 of which were STFC related scientists, who use the prize money to communicate STFC related research.

I’m a Scientist and I’m an Engineer Winners in STFC zones. Click here to download the full report.

And there have been challenges too:

• Recruiting a diverse range of researchers, whose work is related to STFC, has not always been easy. However, towards the end of the award period we were able to work more closely with the STFC outreach team and use their input to choose zone themes and recruit scientists and engineers.

• We are trying to reach new audiences. We created a Harwell Zone to allow Harwell Open Day visitors to text in questions to exhibitors. Visitors were able to text a question, get a response to manage their expectations and a notification when someone answered the question. Even though, there was not enough publicity to reach the public in significant numbers, we started the development of future zones open to non-school sectors of the public.

If you want to explore our findings in more detail, download the full report PDF here.

Have you been awarded with an STFC Award too? Have you faced similar challenges? How do you reach new audiences? Hop in, join the conversation and let us know what you think.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

In February 2015 we partnered with the Wellcome Trust Education to create the I’m a Scientist Learning Zone.

In the Learning Zone teachers could send questions to and have conversations (thought text based live-chats) with neuroscientists and psychologists involved in research on a broad range of topics around the science of learning.

The Learning Zone was successful, both teachers and scientists found it a valuable experience.

1. We created a conversation between teachers and experts on the science of learning: 40 scientists and almost 300 teachers registered to take part.
2. The Learning Zone site was visited by 7,000 users during the event. Pages in the Zone were viewed over 33,000 times.
3. Scientists and teachers valued the event. 89% of teachers and 94% of scientists would participate again.
4. Teachers improved their knowledge about the brain and learning. 66% of the teachers agreed that “their understanding about the brain and/or learning had improved”.
5. Improving knowledge may not lead to more confidence or enable more informed decision-making. Before taking part 73% of teachers strongly agreed that “Understanding more about the brain & learning will allow you to make more informed decisions about teaching” – yet afterwards only 36% agreed that they could take more informed decisions.
6. The Learning Zone bridged the gap between scientists research and teachers. 77% of scientists agreed that they have a better understanding of teachers’ needs after taking part.

This being our first I’m a Scientist event specifically for teachers, we think we still can improve certain aspects of it:

1. Increase the variety of live chat the schedule. There were 2 live chats per week: Monday 8pm and Wednesday 4pm. This schedule remained constant to create familiarity with the timings, however it meant that teachers and scientists who were available at other times were restricted from taking part in the live chats.
2. Add themes to the Learning Zone. Consider theming certain weeks around specific topics, while leaving other weeks with a general “science learning” theme.

You can download the full report here.

We were awarded a Wellcome Trust Society Award to run I’m a Scientist from March 2012 until June 2014. We later received a grant extension for November 2014 to June 2015. This report is all about our learnings in these last three years: from March 2012 until March 2015.

Our main learning points are:

Click here to download the full report

1. I’m a Scientist has gone from 30 zones per year in 2012, to 54 zones scheduled in the 2014/2015 school year.
2. Expanding zones to different audiences: primary school students and general public shows.
3. I’m a Scientist is a public engagement boost for scientists.
4. I’m a Scientist gets students enthused about science.
5. I’m a Scientist reaches a diverse set of students.
6. Teachers come back, but tricky to track.
7. Students ASK about cancer, animals, and life and CHAT about science, scientists and work.
8. Moving forwards, further adaptation to new technologies (such as tablets and smartphones) is important.

Click here to download the full report.

Download the full report here.

The Body Zone was designed to contribute to the 2014 Physiological Society focus on Understanding Obesity, and help to reach secondary school students, at an age where we’ve all become more aware of our appearance and lifestyle.

The Body Zone in I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here! 10^th – 21^st November 2014 was successful:

1. I’m a Scientist November 2014 has been our busiest event so far, and the Body Zone has been one of the busiest zones within the event.
2. The Body Zone was particularly popular with teachers, it featured a steady influx of ASK questions that lead to more than 1,150 questions asked, of which more than 700 were approved and sent to the scientists.
3. The students really got into the zone theme. Students asked lots of questions on the function, purpose and statistics of parts of the anatomy. There were also a lot of questions on diet, nutrition, exercise, obesity, childhood develpment, and diabetes.
4. The scientists were challenged within and beyond their areas of research. All engaged well and were keen to answer questions and take part in the live chats.
5. The drop out rate for schools was very low in the Body Zone – 14 of the 16 schools given places turned up with their students.

You can read the full report here.

In November 2012 we ran 3 zones in I’m a Scientist. We used the event to make a few changes to how we ran it. We opened the event only to teachers who had taken part before. We used a new online registration system for teachers and students. And we ran 3 themed zones which tied into what students were being taught at the time – Cancer, Cells & Genes.

This short report looks at how the November event went. Offering the event just to teachers who had taken part before worked well. Using the new online registration system had a few hiccups, but despite the teething problems online registration is the way forward.  Tying the themed zones into what students are learning at the time was a success. As one teacher said “I used it as an extension activity within the course they were already doing which was great. A really good idea to do this”.

Download the report here.