Ayelet Baram-Tsabari

Exploring new web-based tools to identify public interest in science

There is scant research-based evidence regarding what the public is interested in knowing about science, and more knowledge is needed to tailor relevant and engaging formal and free-choice science environments for different publics. This methodological paper describes the potential and limitations of three existing web-based tools — Google Trends, Google Zeitgeist, and Google Insights for Search — for PUS research. It shows how these tools can be used to (1) identify interests in science and pseudoscience, (2) conduct a cross-national comparison of popular science and pseudoscience-related searches and (3) discover possible motivations when searching for specific terms. Trends identified using analyses of online queries are discussed. These provide a bottom-up assessment of PUS, and may add another argument to the controversy regarding quantitative measures and the deficit model.

A growth medium for the message: Online science journalism affordances for exploring public discourse of science and ethics

Little attention has been paid to how new media foster public discussion of science-related issues. In this exploratory study, we examine discussions generated by articles on the most popular daily news website in Israel. All articles dealt with research studies that involved animal experimentation, a topic often linked to deep ethical conflicts. Based on analysis of 10 articles and more than 600 reader comments, we found that topics in both science and ethics are initiated both by the original article and in the linked discussion threads. The most fruitful topics (measured by number of comments) were initiated in the discussion threads, not in the articles themselves. We suggest that discourse in new media can be understood by thinking of the audience as a ‘growth medium’ in which seeds planted by individual stories can grow (through the affordances of new media) into both knowledge of the sort imagined by the story writers and new branches nurtured by the community itself.

An Instrument for Assessing Scientists' Written Skills in Public Communication of Science

This article describes the development of the first tool for measuring scientists’ written skills in public communication of science. It includes the rationale for establishing learning goals in seven areas: clarity and language, content, knowledge organization, style, analogy, narrative, and dialogue, as well as the questions designed to assess these goals. The skills testing is primarily designed for assessing written communication skills and can be used in many science communication training contexts. It can serve as a baseline survey, as a formative assessment, or in summative pretest/posttest evaluations. The article provides detailed criteria for analyzing the results of the instrument as well as findings from baseline data collected from science graduate and undergraduate students.

Seeking science information online: Data mining Google to better understand the roles of the media and the education system

Which extrinsic cues motivate people to search for science-related information? For many science-related search queries, media attention and time during the academic year are highly correlated with changes in information seeking behavior (expressed by changes in the proportion of Google science-related searches). The data mining analysis presented here shows that changes in the volume of searches for general and well-established science terms are strongly linked to the education system. By contrast, ad-hoc events and current concerns were better aligned with media coverage. The interest and ability to independently seek science knowledge in response to current events or concerns is one of the fundamental goals of the science literacy movement. This method provides a mirror of extrapolated behavior and as such can assist researchers in assessing the role of the media in shaping science interests, and inform the ways in which lifelong interests in science are manifested in real world situations.

The half-life of a "teachable moment": The case of Nobel laureates.

Some science-related events stimulate public interest, and create a teachable moment in which the underlying science temporarily becomes more interesting. Here, media attention, expressed by Google News reference volume, and changes in information seeking behavior, expressed by Google Trends, were used to estimate the length of a teachable moment for 2004–2011 Nobel Prize announcements. On average, Nobel Prize announcements attracted the attention of online users for no longer than a week. News coverage declined slower and occasionally displayed seasonal trends. There was a 50% drop in searches between the day of the announcement and the following day, and an analogous pattern for news coverage of all laureates varying for different disciplines. The affordances of using publicly available online data to identify the most effective teachable moments relating to science are discussed.

Measuring mumbo jumbo: A preliminary quantification of the use of jargon in science communication:

Leaders of the scientific community encourage scientists to learn effective science communication, including honing the skill to discuss science with little professional jargon. However, avoiding jargon is not trivial for scientists for several reasons, and this demands special attention in teaching and evaluation. Despite this, no standard measurement for the use of scientific jargon in speech has been developed to date. Here a standard yardstick for the use of scientific jargon in spoken texts, using a computational linguistics approach, is proposed. Analyzed transcripts included academic speech, scientific TEDTalks, and communication about the discovery of a Higgs-like boson at CERN. Findings suggest that scientists use less jargon in communication with a general audience than in communication with peers, but not always less obscure jargon. These findings may lay the groundwork for evaluating the use of jargon.

Including Students’ Voices as Engagement With Curriculum: Perspectives From a Secondary Biology Course

High school students’ views regarding the best ways to adapt biology studies to fit their interests were explored using 87 written questionnaires containing closed-ended and open-ended questions. The closed-ended questionnaires indicated that the participants are very positive regarding their experience as biology learners and highly interested in what they learn. However, when given the opportunity to voice their opinions in the open-ended questions they explicitly and implicitly indicated a gap between their interests and the requirements of the curriculum. Over half gave priority to teaching to the test over their own interests. Students offered a variety of channels for eliciting and answering their questions; many of those suggestions reflect scholars’ ideas and could easily be implemented in class. We conclude that students could become attentive and resourceful partners for dialogue about what to teach and how to teach science.RésuméAu moyen de 87 questionnaires à questions ouvertes et fermées, nous avons analysé le point de vue des étudiants du secondaire sur les meilleures façons d’adapter les études en biologie aux intérêts des élèves. Les questionnaires à questions fermées indiquent que les participants ont une opinion favorable de leurs expériences en tant qu’apprenants en biologie et qu’ils font preuve d’un intérêt marqué pour ce qu’ils apprennent. Toutefois, lorsqu’on donne aux étudiants l’occasion d’exprimer leur opinion dans les questions ouvertes, ils indiquent clairement, de façon explicite et implicite, qu’il y a une grande différence entre ce qui les intéresse et les exigences du curriculum. Plus de la moitié accordent une plus grande importance aux contenus susceptibles d’être testés aux examens qu’aux contenus qui les intéressent personnellement. Les étudiants proposent une multitude de possibilités en vue de trouver réponse à leurs questions. Plusieurs de ces suggestions reflètent les intérêts des enseignants et pourraient donc être réalisées en classe. Nous concluons que le point de vue des étudiants serait une ressource précieuse dans le cadre d’un dialogue sur les contenus à enseigner et sur la façon d’enseigner les sciences.

Automatic jargon identifier for scientists engaging with the public and science communication educators

Scientists are required to communicate science and research not only to other experts in the field, but also to scientists and experts from other fields, as well as to the public and policymakers. One fundamental suggestion when communicating with non-experts is to avoid professional jargon. However, because they are trained to speak with highly specialized language, avoiding jargon is difficult for scientists, and there is no standard to guide scientists in adjusting their messages. In this research project, we present the development and validation of the data produced by an up-to-date, scientist-friendly program for identifying jargon in popular written texts, based on a corpus of over 90 million words published in the BBC site during the years 2012–2015. The validation of results by the jargon identifier, the De-jargonizer, involved three mini studies: (1) comparison and correlation with existing frequency word lists in the literature; (2) a comparison with previous research on spoken language jargon use in TED transcripts of non-science lectures, TED transcripts of science lectures and transcripts of academic science lectures; and (3) a test of 5,000 pairs of published research abstracts and lay reader summaries describing the same article from the journals PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS Genetics. Validation procedures showed that the data classification of the De-jargonizer significantly correlates with existing frequency word lists, replicates similar jargon differences in previous studies on scientific versus general lectures, and identifies significant differences in jargon use between abstracts and lay summaries. As expected, more jargon was found in the academic abstracts than lay summaries; however, the percentage of jargon in the lay summaries exceeded the amount recommended for the public to understand the text. Thus, the De-jargonizer can help scientists identify problematic jargon when communicating science to non-experts, and be implemented by science communication instructors when evaluating the effectiveness and jargon use of participants in science communication workshops and programs.

Preparing Scientists to Be Science Communicators

Science communication is a professional skill increasingly expected of scientists by their own organizations. Several studies have described motivations and challenges for scientists who wish to engage with the public, as well as the abundance of such interactions. However, few studies have systematically examined scientists’ ability to communicate with the public. Nonetheless, many organizations and institutions have created training opportunities to help scientists become better at public communication. Although much effort is being invested in science communication training, a conceptually-based list of specific learning goals has not yet been developed, and the existing training efforts are rarely accompanied by systematic evaluation of learning outcomes. Few programs do sufficient and appropriate evaluation to demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach. This chapter identifies a list of core competencies for effective science communication in terms of skills, knowledge and attitudes; points to effective pedagogies to achieve the relevant learning goals; and specifies assessment practices to measure the attainment of these goals.

Assessing and improving L2 graduate students’ popular science and academic writing in an academic writing course

Abstract This paper reports a study using a quasi-experimental design to examine whether an academic writing course in English can improve graduate students’ academic and popular science writing skills. To address this issue, we designed pre- and post-assessment tasks, an intervention assessment task and a scoring rubric. The pre- and post-assessment tasks included writing in contrasting genres, i.e. an academic paper abstract to assess academic writing and a press release to assess popular science writing. Students’ pre- and post-assessment tasks were rated using a newly developed rubric addressing English proficiency, and academic and popular science writing skills. The rubric was based on course material, previous research and a pilot study. The study analysed 177 non-native English science and engineering graduate students’ writing in a compulsory Academic Writing in English course at the beginning and end of a 14-week semester. Findings indicated significant improvement in academic and popular science writing, as well as improvement in students’ English language proficiency.