Growing pains Presentation by Laura Fogg-Rogers Senior Research - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Growing pains Presentation by Laura Fogg-Rogers Senior Research Fellow in Science Learning to grow – Communication @laurafoggrogers evaluation and reflective Laura.foggrogers @uwe.ac.uk practice

Which events are Who is coming to our popular with which festival? audiences? Are the events we Are we reaching the put on people we wanted to popular/enjoyable/ attract? educational? Reflective practice = Are we achieving our aims?

Pilot Festivals

UK SFN Pilot Evaluation Tools Organiser reflection form Organiser observation forms Audience questionnaires • Based on BSA questionnaire and includes two SFN questions: • What postcode do you live in? • Did this event increase your interest in science careers? Audience snapshot interviews • Motivations for attending • Demographics of audience Audience focus groups • Deep understanding of motivations for attending • Demographics of audience

Snapshot interview results Participants: Age demographics of the audiences sampled Bath N=57 25 Northern Ireland N=11 Nottingham N=22 20 Families: Percentage of attendees 15 Bath 77% Northern Ireland 0% Nottingham 91% 10 Gender: 47% female 5 Ethnicity: 82% white 0 16-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80+ Age category in years

Audience reasons for attending science festivals Percentage of repondents who mentioned the theme 31% 31% 24% 22% 21% 19% 18% 2%

Intentions following the event Connections to science Bath 88% Northern Ireland 45% Nottingham 64% 47% Percentage of repondents who 41% mentioned the theme 12% Already interested in STEM I will attend more events I will learn more and/or and this reinforces interest like this interest the kids in STEM

UK SFN Pilot Evaluation Tools  Organiser reflection form Useful for reflective  Organiser observation forms practice Harder to  Audience questionnaires administer and get take-up, unless part  Focus groups of booking process Very useful, but  Audience snapshot interviews needs volunteers to run it  Other methods which don’t need much analysis e.g. Feedback boards or comments cards

Reflective practice Report available on UWE Science Communication Unit website http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/ 33602/