I’ve been home in Montreal for a couple weeks now, but the semester wasn’t
actually over until I sent in my final two projects. We didn’t have any exams,
but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t lots of end of term work to do.
When I was looking into the Science Communication program last year, I
contacted a few people who I knew had completed the graduate diploma to try to
get a sense of the program. I’ve made a few choices in the last couple of years
that have left me less than happy a lot of the time so I wanted to make sure
the program was for me. One of the people I contacted exclaimed that the
program isn’t just great, but that its greatness is something to climb a
mountain and yell to the whole world about. I took that (and a few other
things) as good signs and jumped right in. I have never looked back since.
To start with, the people are amazing! Our two program directors are
supportive and always around (or if they aren’t, they answer emails within
minutes). They listen to any concerns we have and encourage us to engage in
coursework and community activities that push our limits but that are within
our reach. Our other two profs provide interesting dimensions to the program as
well. It sometimes surprises me how many different ways you can look at the
same topic and still learn something new.
Since everyone in the class has a different background and we all come with
different school and work experience, we learn a lot from each other as well.
An 11-person class is the perfect place for discussion – as are a swing dance
class, sushi, brunch, next to a telescope watching a solar eclipse, Science
North and everywhere else we congregate. One of my classmates likes to say that
despite trying to meet and befriend people outside of our program, she keeps
coming back to us.
It’s not easy to summarize an entire semester worth of classes in a single
blog post but I’m going to try.
Principles of Science Communication (commonly referred to as Rhetoric) was a
class that we only had for half the semester, but twice as often as the rest of
our classes. It was the grad student version of an English class where we
talked all about how people go about convincing people of their views on
different topics. We each brought in many “artifacts” or examples of science
communication so the class was focused around our interests. Topics included
climate change, Ebola, cancer, vaccinations, climate change, nanotechnology,
climate change and space exploration (did I mention climate change?).
In Design Theory, we looked at the many steps of the design process and
finished the semester off by designing an entire exhibit about the
relationships between the Sun, Moon and Earth. Working as a whole class and
with a short deadline was challenging, but it was extremely neat to see what we
could do when we all worked together and challenged ourselves. It also felt
like something real as opposed to just essay writing. Partway through the
semester we also got to create a science artifact by changing the format of
some other piece. Katie and I worked from a boring article to create our own
movie about Curiosity on Mars.
Our Audiences and Issues class jumped around many topics from fish to
climate change (there it is again) and from misinformation to science in the
North. We learned how to make a communication map and are working on briefing
notes, communication plans and presentations to come after Christmas. I worked
with four other people to create a communication plan for the use of social
media in promoting the program (Like us on
Facebook, follow us on
Twitter and
YouTube, and do whatever you do on Instagram and
Pinterest [Coming January 2015! –Ed.]!)
We had our Learning Theory class at Science North so we frequently used the
exhibits there as our lab to study how people learn in free-choice
environments. Many of us looked at computer games (Yay Zoombinis!) for our
midterm project, which was really interesting because you don’t always think of
that being one of the places where learning occurs. For our final project we
got to create our own Science Communication piece and analyze it for its
learning potential.
Our Research Methods course replaces the Rhetoric one half-way through
the semester and it’s just the beginning of our year-long research project.
We’ve all come up with our topics, questions and preliminary literature review
but there’s still a long way to go.
After Christmas we’re splitting up the class because we got to choose two
out of three courses (Mass Media, Live Presentations and Exhibit Design). I
chose the last two, which might surprise some people who know how shy I am, but
I figure there’s no point in taking the classes if I’m not pushing myself. We
still have one class all together – Science Communication Practices – which
sounds like it is going to be an extension to Audiences and Issues. From what I
can tell, it seems like next semester is going to be even more hands on and I’m
really looking forward to taking even greater advantage of our partnership with
Science North.
As well as courses we’ve had almost weekly guest visits from people like Tim
Lougheed, John Miller, David Lickely and many others. We’ve also gone on
fieldtrips around the area looking at the Sudbury crater, Dynamic Earth and
way, way down to SNOLab.
As well as all of that, each of us has a GRA (Graduate Research
Assistantship) we’ve been working on and I was lucky enough to get one where
I’m looking at visitors interacting with exhibits at Science North and
determining their learning potential.
As for Sudbury itself, it’s taken some getting used to, but it isn’t as cold
as I expected – yet. I’m living with two other people from the program and all
of us get together almost every day. Most of our classes are in a
lakeside building with heated floors, so really I can’t complain too much!
This may seem like a long blog post, but when I say that I’m studying Science
Communication most people just assume that I mean science journalism, so I
wanted to demonstrate that it is so much more – I wanted to scream it from the
top of a mountain!
There is no question about
the importance of science in our society. From healthcare to the environment, and all the way up to space, science permeates
every facet of life. But its importance needn’t overshadow its ability to be
fun and engaging.
