Science in Society recognised for excellence in teaching

Breaking the mould yet again, Rebecca Priestley and Rhian Salmon were joint winners of the Early Career Teaching Excellence Award, an honour that is usually awarded to a single recipient. Rhian and Rebecca, who co-lead the Science in Society group, have, since they started working together in 2013, developed a suite of courses, including an undergraduate minor […]

Want to be a science writer?

Ashleigh Young and Rebecca Priestley are teaching CREW352: Creative Science Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters again this year. Past students have included undergraduate science and humanities students, experienced writers and journalists, environmental advocates and practising scientists. Students on the course have written engaging non-fiction stories about science and had these stories published in […]

New ‘Antarctica Online’ Course

Following Rebecca and Cliff’s successful trip to Antarctica in December 2014, the Science in Society team have been working hard to put together a new fully online course called ‘Antarctica Online’. The course features lectures that were filmed on the ice and examines contemporary Antarctic scientific research, placing it in a wider scientific, historical, social and […]

Antarctica online: return from the ice

Cliff and I are back from the ice, and have started editing our field footage and putting our lectures together. Thanks to a fabulous video camera (Canon XF100) and some incredible locations (and hopefully some interesting commentary from us) it’s all looking really great. One of the only problems I’ve noticed so far, is that […]

Reflections on SCIE 311: Science Communication

Between July – October 2015, Rebecca and I had the genuine pleasure of teaching a topic that we both love, to a class of fantastic, enthusiastic students. This was the first time either of us had taught Science Communication as a formal University course, and we while we had bold ambitions, we weren’t sure what […]

The Conversation

The following work is by Matapuku Robati, a student in our Science Communication course. For this assignment, students were encouraged to explore non-written modes of communication. Below is the story of this work… THE CONVERSATION, BY MATAPUKU ROBATI [vimeo http://vimeo.com/109568592] If I was given the opportunity to communicate something to the world that I actually […]

A very cold classroom

In Norway, they say there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. Back home in New Zealand, I wouldn’t tolerate giving a lecture in minus 8 degrees C – or minus 17 if you take the windchill into account. But down here at Scott Base, that’s just fine, because I’m dressed for the […]

Antarctica online

Rhian and I have been pre-recording lectures for our online courses for three years now. Our online courses are asynchronous, which means that students can watch the lectures when and where it suits them – they just need to complete the assignments that are due at the end of each module. Some of our lectures […]