STUDENT’S SCIENCE COMMUNICATION CHALLENGE DEVELOPED WITH AN INTERNATIONAL DESIGN THINKING APPROACH (2021)

In the last decades, more importance is being given to science communication competences. To be able to communicate in a language that reaches a non-technical audience is an important competence that must be trained. There are several courses and programs aiming at this objective, but it is generally left outside the Master’s or PhD plans.This paper describes the science communication challenge proposed to the students within the Biomaterials and Biosensors course from the Master program in Marine Resources Biotechnology, lectured in the Polytechnic of Leiria, Portugal. In this curricular unit students had to choose a recent paper related to biosensors, understand the main reported findings or methods described and make a presentation for the class, as in several other curricular units. The novelty in this challenge was to communicate the same article in a non-technical language within a short film for a global audience.To help in the generation of creative ideas for the film, a design thinking workshop was developed. Once the curricular unit is being lectured in a virtual format, due to the pandemic situation, students had to learn how to use collaborative platforms like MIRO and ZOOM to work in small teams with creative induction templates. Benefiting from this distance interaction, and aiming at international and multidisciplinary teams, several students from other European higher education institutions, with experience in design thinking methodologies, were invited for an ideation workshop, teaming with students from Biotechnology. To prepare the ideation workshop, a short video was sent to all students explaining the objectives and stating the purpose of the challenge. Each team was composed by four students, two had studied the paper from a scientific point of view and two other students were completely new to the scientific domain of the article, but had some experience in design thinking, education, and communication. After the ice breaking presentation and the brief paper explanation, teams applied the brain writing methodology to generate as much ideas as possible within the MIRO stickers board. Those ideas were presented and discussed within the team and the best ones were moved to a matrix relating their impact and simplicity. This matrix was used to select the simpler ideas that could generate the greatest impact. The final team task was the definition of the main points of the film timeline, according to the selected ideas. At the end of these intense three hours of ideation work, one of the invited students had to report the team’s ideas and the suggested film timeline to all the participants. At the final wrap up some students also shared how they felt with the workshop, stating that it was very fun and productive.Students of the Biomaterials and Biosensors curricular unit evaluated this workshop as a very positive activity, mentioning the difficulties to communicate biotechnology outside the biotechnology circle and in a foreign language, but also reporting the joy to share some of their knowledge and to get creative ideas as feedback. The following step for these students is to produce the film, that will be presented also to the international volunteers. Together they will decide who will be the challenge winning team and, in the process, contribute to a greater science awareness.