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Monday, July 25, 2011

How to talk to real people

Not everyone speaks 'geek.' A graduate course aims to give students less technical ways to explain their science research. Credit: iStockphoto.com.

The New York Times "Education Life" writes about a new course at Emory:

Recognizing that scientists can be really, really hard to understand, Emory last semester introduced “Communicating Science” to teach grad students to write for and talk to laypeople. Students create presentations, blog and compose “elevator speeches” addressing various scenarios.

Pat Marsteller, a biologist, developed the course and co-teaches it with two chemists, which she says is good because most of the 23 students last term were chemists, who apparently speak a dialect. She says she had her work cut out for her: “The first day somebody said, ‘Why should I want to talk to anybody who doesn’t understand carbon?’”

Read the whole article in the New York Times
.

Related:
Cultivating brains for science
Where you have friction, changes can occur
Sparking a love of chemistry in teens

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