A few weeks back I spent a few days trying to explain the work that we do in my field. As we do this all the time, it’s usually not a big deal. But at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, one minute you’re explaining to school children and the next to a Nobel laureate. How do you explain effectively whilst keeping faithful to the science?
Our method was fairly simple: use an analogy (listening) that everybody was familiar with, and let people get hands on with models of the theory and the experiments. We also had an online game that people could play at the time or at their leisure, and an explanatory movie to draw people in. Combine that with lots of people, so that nobody had to do too much, and it worked reasonably well.
It was very interesting to see the level of explanation given on the other exhibits. Of the stands that I enjoyed the most, the NPL stand on perception said very little (but the hands on “games” spoke for themselves as to just how good or bad our perception skills really are), the exhibit on exoplanets was fascinating with a similar level of explanation to our stand, whilst the amazing display on identifying penguins was a leading feature of the exhibition but included very high level explanations, including discussions of how the reaction-diffusion equation leads to identifiable changes in morphology (and that was the level of jargon used…).
Some key things that I learned about explaining academic work to a large and varied audience:
- You’re going to be standing up a lot. And talking a lot. You will only do a decent job if you’ve got the energy and are comfortable, which means comfortable shoes, lots to drink, clothing that means you’re not too hot or cold. You will need a break every couple of hours as well.
- Hands on exhibits are good, and encouraging people to play with them is good, but mostly people need encouragement and explanation as to why they’re doing something. Draw them in, get them playing, hit them with the explanation (show then do then tell).
- Don’t expect people to digest lots of text – there often won’t be either time or space. Make fliers for them to take away, or better still make business cards with a website on.
- Have a story to tell, and make sure everybody on the stand can tell the whole story. If you have say three parts of the exhibit you will typically have one person standing by each. However, the audience will approach just one person, and will not like being passed around like a parcel. Continuity of contact person is essential. So everybody needs to be able to explain everything (at some level).
- At this sort of thing there are three types of audience:
- Those that know nothing. These are the easiest, as you give them the straightforward planned explanation. Games, hands-on, freebies and talking. Lots of personal attention and enthusiasm and you’ll be fine.
- Those that know lots. These are more difficult – you have to find out as tactfully as possible how they understand things and where the limits of their knowledge is, so you can find the easiest way of explaining your specialist area. Flyers are useful, as is lots of discussion around the hands on exhibits (as they will usually display what they understand whilst playing).
- Teachers. Short of time and patience, they may not be there to learn at all – they are there to get ideas for how to distract the kids in the class. That may include finding good people to come in to the school and talk to the kids, or it may be about finding material they can use in class. They will want posters, contact names for later outreach visits, and ideas for things that kids could do or build. If you have a hands-on exhibit that could be built by school children, a set of instructions would go down a treat.
- Make friends with your neighbouring stands, and anybody else relevant to your science at the exhibit. A lot of stands were using lasers, but only one was focussed on it – we could piggyback on their explanation where necessary. Similarly, the effect of gravity in a binary system was something we needed to explain for the black holes, and the exoplanets people also needed to cover. With limited time, if somebody else has already explained it well everybody can gain.
We estimated later that the groups collaborating on our stand (one of 30 or so) spent of the order of £20k on the exhibit. So the full exhibition probably cost the scientific groups involved around half a million pounds, for four days of outreach to a few thousand people. And really it was the time involved in preparing and doing that we felt the most. So the absolute key thing was to enjoy it as much as possible, and to learn as much as we could about how to explain our work. It was great fun – but don’t ask us to do it again any time soon.
[...] of posts on our own efforts at outreach and popularisation. Here I’d pick my post on the Royal Society Exhibition, largely because it was such an interesting experience to be involved in. Outreach remains [...]