• Question: How do you help us understand your work

    Asked by mrdiamond to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Great question! I had to give it some thought… what do I do?!

      I try and help people understand the work I’m doing by:
      – answering questions! Just like I’m doing now… the more you ask, the more you can learn and understand what we’re doing. So keep asking!
      – speaking to people and doing presentations – I’ve visited a few schools near where I live and done presentations on my work, using powerpoint slides. I’ve also brought in crayfish specimens for people to look at. Afterwards, I answer questions!
      – using normal language – scientific words or ‘jargon’ can be a bit confusing and sometimes there’s no need for it, so if I’m speaking to a non-scientist, I make sure I use normal, everyday words that everyone can understand!
      – drawing pictures or showing photographs – sometimes it’s easier to explain something with a picture. For example, if you asked me what a crayfish looked like, I’m sure you’d rather see a nice photograph than listen to me babble on for ages trying to describe it! It’s also easy to add labels (e.g. of body parts) to a picture.
      – taking people out with me to do fieldwork… one of the best ways for people to understand what I do, is to come with me and see real, live animals in the wild. I’ve taken friends who don’t do science (photographers, graphic designers, teachers, musicians, schoolkids, office workers… loads of people!) with me to go crayfishing and by the end of the day, they all know a lot more about what a crayfish is and why I do what I do!

    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      As Zara said, it all comes down to how well you can talk to other people and explain your ideas and the work you do. It is no good being the cleverest scientist in the world (definitely not me by the way!), if you can’t then explain your work to anyone else. Some of the best science done is when it is actually very simple and easy to explain to people.

      In my everyday work I have to talk to people from different scientific backgrounds – maths, biology, psychology and computer science. We have to explain our ideas to each other in simple ways using language that we can all understand. So talking to people on I’m A Scientist will probably not be that different!

      Is there anything else that you think that we could do to help you understand our scientific work?

    • Photo: Nicolas Biber

      Nicolas Biber answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I have also thought about this a lot lately 🙂 I always encourage people to ask questions, this is the best way of finding out what you want to know or what you don’t understand. It’s always good to start explaining things with something exciting. Personally it helps me to understand things a lot better if I know what purpose they serve.
      I agree with Zara, it’s always better to show people stuff or even let them do things rather than to just talk at them. Unfortunately we don’t really have this option here, but I really like taking people to the lab or to the field, so they can help me with my work. It helps me get my work done, and its exciting for the people who help me, and they always learn something from it.

    • Photo: Jessica Chu

      Jessica Chu answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Yep, agree with all three answers!!

      Just to add a bit more.. our university hold some public lectures where anyone from anywhere (scientists, artists, historians etc!) can come and listen in!
      The people who give public lectures will be aware that everyone is from different backgrounds so will make slides suitable for everyone to understand and if you don’t – you can just ask them to explain it more! So this is a good way for people to find out what kind of research is going on and in our uni!

Comments