News

We’re always evaluating the online STEM enrichment activity, I’m a Scientist, to explore its impact and how it can be improved. Check out latest evaluation posts. We know anecdotally that participating in I’m a Scientist has a positive effect on students’ attitudes to science. Teachers tell us that their students were buzzing, and that they understood more about science. Students thank scientists in live Chats for an interesting lesson. They tell us that it is “better than Facebook”. But, being data geeks, that isn’t good enough. We wanted to know just how much we were affecting the students. Were we affecting them all by the same amount? Girls, boys, year groups? Did being more active in the event mean a greater change in attitude? Questions we ask students Thanks in part to the pilot work by Robin Longdin (then a Science Communication masters student at UWE) we ask every student registering for I’m … Continue reading →

When teachers ask me what aged students they should bring on I’m a Scientist, my answer is often something along the lines of “well, it’s developed for Year 9 students but all ages get something different out of taking part, so take your pick”. The good news is that our data supports this. When students register we ask them what year group they’re in. There are Year 5s. There are also Year 13s. Around two thirds of the 30,000+ students registered so far are KS3 (Years 7, 8 & 9). The bad news? It’s not really bad news as such, but it looks like I should also be advising teachers on the time of year they should take part with different year groups. March and June are great for pre-GCSE students. Teachers tell us they’re looking for something fun to do with students at the end of the year. They’re less good … Continue reading →

How many zones have we run? How many students engaging with how many scientists? Asking how many questions? What year group are they? Where in the UK are they? These are some of the questions we get asked a lot, and until now haven’t had all the answers in one place to roll off the tip of our tongues. We’re pulling together some slides summarising I’m a Scientist to date and once they’re done we’ll post them up here. In the mean time, I’ll be posting snippets that show just how far we’ve come since our first big Wellcome Trust grant in 2010. To start us off (and to set the scene for the graphs and maps to come in future posts) here are some of the numbers so far, up to February 2014: Zones: 118 51 general science zones, 67 themed zones Spread across 10 events, in March, June … Continue reading →

We’ve published all our individual zone reports from the June 2013 event. If you delve further back into the archives, you’ll find them for the zones we ran in March 2013 & November 2012 too. All the reports are tagged (funnily enough) under “Evaluation Reports“. Each report sums up the activity in that zone. They provide some information for the scientists and teachers in that zone about how much the students and scientists interacted. How many questions were asked and answered? What were the popular topics asked by students? What examples of great engagement stood out? What did students, scientists & teachers say about taking part? How does the winner plan to spend their £500 on communicating more science? We email out each report to all the scientists and teachers in that zone. Scientists tell us the reports really help justify their participation to supervisors and colleagues. The detail tells them … Continue reading →