Application deadline

Registration deadline for PhD students at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway: January 2.

Application deadline for external applicants: December 1.

Type of course

Multi-disciplinary course.

This course is aimed at PhD students and researchers, but is open for others. In other words, master/bachelor students are welcome to apply too (they will not be able to get credits, but we will provide a course certificate). If you aim to include the credits from the course in your 30 mandatory PhD ECTS you should discuss it with both your supervisor and your faculty.

Admission requirements

Prerequisites: None

Maximum 20 participants

PhD students register for the course through StudentWeb.

External applicants apply for admission through SøknadsWeb.

Contact Ingjerd Gauslaa Nilsen at the BFE-faculty if you have troubles or questions regarding registration to the course.

Course content

Communicating science to a variety of audiences is an important skill all researchers have to learn. Whether you want to tweet about your current research project, create a podcast, give a talk to peers at a scientific conference, give an interview for the media or explaining your research to a school class, science communication is part of a researchers everyday life.

Day 1 of this course is a workshop led by the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) in partnership with Arctic Frontiers and the High North Academy. The workshop will introduce participants to learning how to effectively communicate their science focusing on two main parts:

1) Using social media to communicate your research: Twitter, blogs or podcasts are fun and effective ways to communicate your research. In this part of the workshop, we will be talking about how you can do this and what possibilities are out there.

2) Media Training: This part will introduce participants to insights on how to communicate their science to the media. It will also introduce them to the work of journalists, how they find a good scientific story and how they condense the complicated scientific research into a language that is understandable to the general public. Speakers for this part will be experts in journalism/ communication and journalists.

Day 2 will be a writing workshop and interview training.

The detailed programme will be published at High north academy website.

Objectives of the course

After the course the students should have knowledge about:
-the wide variety of popular scientific communication arenas, their possibilities and their limitations
-reflecting about the role of the research community in public science communication
-understanding the journalists working methods and realities.
-how the university can facilitate media contacts

Skills:
-To be able to write a popular scientific text for publication
-To be able to give an interview to a camera-team
-To know how to package a message to the media
-practical skills in photography

General competence:
-To popularize research, and to adjust the message according to the audience
-To communicate research in a form of a story with a clear message and structure
-To be able to choose the right media to the right story, and to know how to create interest for the story

Language of instruction and examination

Teaching methods

Assessment

Recommended reading/syllabus

Important dates:

Course duration: 26 - 27 January 2016.

Pre-work instructions will be sent out 11 January 2016.

Deadline for pre-work delivery: 20 January 2016.

Deadline for delivery of popularized science text: 10 February 2016.