NRT-IGE: Fostering Effective Oral Communication Skills for STEM Graduate Students

科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域的研究生教育严格地为学生在各自领域的创新做好准备，但通常不包括如何有效地将这些创新传达给他人的正式培训。为了确保我们生活在一个公正和充满活力的社会中，科学家能够与其他领域的科学家、非科学专家和公众分享他们的研究成果是至关重要的。利用表演艺术的知识，该项目将实施一项新的试点培训计划，向STEM研究生教授口头交流，促进对交流的更深入理解，并提供公开演讲、即兴表演技巧和阅读肢体语言的练习。蒙大拿州立大学博兹曼分校获得的研究生教育创新（IGE）国家科学基金会研究培训奖将通过确定口头交流训练的各个方面来实现STEM研究生教育的现代化，这些方面对学生与各种受众进行口头交流的能力产生积极影响，并增加公众对科学的理解和参与。三组被招募的八名STEM研究生将通过创建播客和在社区活动中向公众解释他们的研究来练习和完善他们的口头沟通技巧。参与该项目的团队包括物理学、生物学、数学和工程学领域的专家，以及公共演讲、表演、教育研究和图书馆学方面的专家。这种广泛的专业知识将确保学科多样化的STEM学生被招募到该计划中，提供跨学科的观点和指导，并促进该试点研究生培训计划的成功。本研究将探讨STEM研究生口头沟通技能的针对性干预是否能提高他们有效地向广泛受众传达研究成果的能力。该项目将使用形成性、总结性和纵向评估来确定干预的各个部分如何成功地在以下领域培养学生的口头沟通技能：避免使用术语、公共演讲技能和非语言表达技能。对每个队列进行为期一年的纵向研究的评估数据将包括与口头交流、学生自我报告以及对学生及其导师的采访三个方面相关的调查数据。为了评估与公众沟通时减少行话等能力，该项目将创建、修改和使用有效的公开演讲规则。干预前后的数据将在学生和队列之间进行比较，以确定训练的每个方面的效果。结果和成功将在全国范围内与其他STEM专家在特定领域的会议以及美国科学促进会国家会议上分享。美国国家科学基金会研究实习生（NRT）计划旨在鼓励开发和实施大胆的、新的、具有潜在变革性的STEM研究生教育培训模式。研究生教育创新轨道专门用于试点，测试和评估新颖，创新和潜在的变革性研究生教育方法。

Graduate education in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) rigorously prepares students to innovate in their fields, yet it often does not include formal training in how to effectively communicate those innovations to others. To ensure we live in a just and vibrant society, it is vital that scientists are able to share their research findings with scientists in other fields, non-science experts, and the public. Using knowledge from the performing arts, this project will implement a novel pilot training program to teach oral communication to STEM graduate students, facilitating a deeper understanding of communication and providing practice in public speaking, improvisational techniques, and reading body language. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship award in the Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) track to Montana State University-Bozeman will modernize STEM graduate education by pinpointing aspects of oral communication training that positively impact students' abilities to communicate orally to a wide variety of audiences, and increase the public's understanding of and engagement with science. Three recruited cohorts of eight STEM graduate students will practice and refine their oral communication skills by creating podcasts and speaking at community events in which they explain their research to the public. The team working on this project includes domain experts in physics, biology, mathematics, and engineering, as well as experts in public speaking, acting, education research, and library sciences. This broad expertise will ensure that disciplinarily diverse STEM students are recruited into the program, providing interdisciplinary perspectives and instruction and facilitating the success of this pilot graduate training program. This research will investigate whether targeted intervention in oral communication skills for STEM graduate students improves their ability to effectively convey their research to a broad audience. The project will use formative, summative, and longitudinal assessments to determine how various portions of the intervention are successful in developing students' oral communication skills in the following realms: avoiding the use of jargon, public speaking skills, and non-verbal delivery skills. Assessment data for year-long longitudinal studies of each cohort will include survey data related to three areas of oral communication, self-reports from students, and interviews with students and their mentors. To assess competencies such as reducing jargon for communicating with the public, this project will create, modify and use rubrics for effective public speaking. Pre- and post-intervention data will be compared among students and cohorts to determine the effects of each aspect of the training. Results and successes will be shared nationwide with other STEM experts at domain-specific conferences as well as at American Association for the Advancement of Sciences National Conferences. The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative 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.