NRT-IGE: A test bed for STEM graduate student communication training

NRT-IGE：STEM研究生交流培训的试验台科学家经常被批评没有更多地与公众接触，导致科学家在实验室做的事情与普通公众对科学的理解之间的差距越来越大。大多数科学家没有接受过有助于他们与公众接触的沟通技能的培训。在密苏里-哥伦比亚大学的研究生教育创新(IGE)轨道上，这个国家科学基金会研究培训(NRT)奖将寻求通过调查研究生的沟通培训并开发确保其有效性的方法来解决这个问题。这个项目汇集了来自生物、物理、战略传播、新闻学、戏剧、创意写作和视觉设计的高度跨学科的团队，以开发和测试评估研究生课程传播培训有效性的方法。这一新颖的试点项目将借鉴科学之外的传播研究，并从多个角度对培训效果进行统计评估，其中包括公众的观点。该项目将产生研究生培训计划可以用来确保传播培训质量的工具和程序，并最终在科学家和其他人之间提供更好的交流。尽管人们普遍认为需要更好的科学交流和培训项目的激增，但几乎没有证据表明什么方法可以真正提高科学家的交流技能。一个跨学科团队将开发一种受控试验台，用于理科研究生项目的沟通培训。纵向研究将评估学员在五个学习模块上的习得和保持情况。严格的统计设计将把学员的自我评价和教师的评价与数百名非理科观众对调查工具的反应联系起来。对培训前、培训后和培训后对受众的影响进行统计比较，将确定有效性。受训者将来自生命科学，随后将来自物理科学，以确定该计划在不同学科之间的可转换性。这些实验将为培训评估提供一个创新的模式，可以被其他项目以相对较低的成本采用。NSF研究培训(NRT)计划旨在鼓励开发和实施大胆的、新的、潜在的变革性和可扩展的STEM研究生教育培训模式。研究生教育创新跟踪专门致力于对研究生教育的新的、创新的和潜在的变革性方法进行试验、测试和评估。这项工作部分得到了EHR核心研究(ECR)计划的支持。ECR计划强调基础STEM教育研究，以产生该领域的基础知识。在基本、广泛和持久的关键领域进行投资：STEM学习和STEM学习环境，扩大STEM的参与，以及STEM劳动力发展。

NRT-IGE: A test bed for STEM graduate student communication trainingScientists are often criticized for not engaging more with the general public, causing a widening gap between what scientists do in the lab and what the lay public understands about science. Most scientists are not trained with communication skills that would help them engage with the general public. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award in the Innovations of Graduate Education (IGE) Track to the University of Missouri-Columbia will seek to remedy this problem by investigating communication training for graduate students and developing ways to assure its effectiveness. This project brings together a highly interdisciplinary team from biology, physics, strategic communication, journalism, theater, creative writing, and visual design to develop and test the means of evaluating the effectiveness of communication training in graduate programs. The novel pilot will draw on communication research outside the sciences and use statistical evaluation of training effectiveness from multiple points of view, including the public's. The project will result in tools and procedures graduate training programs could use to assure the quality of communications training, and eventually provide better communication between scientists and others. Despite widespread agreement on the need for better science communication and a proliferation of training programs, there is little evidence about what approaches actually improve scientists' communication skills. An interdisciplinary team will develop a controlled test bed for communication training in science graduate programs. Longitudinal studies will assess trainees' acquisition and retention over five learning modules. A rigorous statistical design will relate trainees' self-evaluations and instructors' evaluations to responses to survey instruments by hundreds of non-science audience members. Statistical comparison of pre-, post-, and no-training impacts on audiences will establish effectiveness. Trainees will come from the life sciences and later from physical sciences to determine the program's transferability among disciplines. These experiments will provide an innovative model for training evaluation that can be adopted by other programs at relatively low cost. The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative, and scalable models for STEM graduate education training. The Innovations in Graduate Education Track is dedicated solely to piloting, testing, and evaluating novel, innovative, and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education.This work is supported, in part, by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.