Let's Celebrate: Season One Recap
Thanks for joining us for the inaugural season of The SciComm Collective!
It’s been a journey getting here, a fun one with friends new and old, a steep one with lots of learning curves, but most of all a super satisfying one because
Helped by a UWA Grand Challenges Make A Difference Impact Grant, our group set out in May to “create a podcast”.
We had plenty of ideas and barely any experience.
But together we made it, successfully launching more than the initial two episodes we’d planned… In fact, this season we released SEVEN, with two others already in edits for next season and more on the way!
We expanded our scope to include this website, reaching its first 500 visits just recently. That’s 501 now – thanks, reader!
We’ve been blogging, sharing on social media, and even made our own merch.
We had an awesome launch party, and attended the Grand Challenges Showcase where we presented to attendees including UWA’s Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Tim Colmer, and other MAD Grant recipients (you were all amazing)!
We have 15 students involved in the project, with plans to expand next year – hello, UWA Guild – plus our lovely advisors have been a wonderful support.
Thanks to Heather, Rocky, Eugenie, Ann, Siobhan, Patrick, Matt, Clare, and anyone we might have missed.
We are a student-led podcast and science communication platform. Our local and international backgrounds and perspectives offer unique insights into SciComm. Through our interviews with practitioners, thinkers, learners, and audiences from different places and identities, we aim to diversify SciComm’s outreach and representation.
We also aim to support, inspire and empower the next generation of science communicators.
Our mission is to connect science and science communication. We’re here to help bridge the gap between science and diverse audiences through engaging communication that meets their needs – focusing on the UWA Grand Challenge of “a more just and equitable world” by contributing to the UN Sustainability Goal 4: Quality Education and Goal 10: Reducing Inequality within and among all countries.
According to Spotify, we’ve reached listeners in Australia, Panama, Russia, the United States, India, the UK (hi, Mum and Dad!), Indonesia, New Zealand, Colombia, Singapore, and Sweden. Regular listeners are in the double digits, with our main demographic being university students of all ages and people interested in science communication.
Throughout our first season, we not only created great content, we learned invaluable skills that are not specifically taught in our courses:
· how to edit and upload a podcast to different platforms
· developing a logo and branding (one of the hardest initial challenges!)
· developing digital platforms, including our website and various new web accounts
· social media content and marketing
· organising a launch event
· working as a team to agree on directions and meet deadlines
· creating a governance structure (this one was hard and new to most of us!)
We also applied skills we’ve learned through UWA Science Communication such as:
· identifying our Purpose, Audience, Message
· recording a podcast
· conducting interviews
· writing science communication content including blog posts
In fact, our before and after self-efficacy survey showed a significant increase in students’ ability to create a podcast, create content and media, and engage with various audiences about science and science communication!
The SciComm Collective isn’t a once-off project; we’re a launchpad for science communication students and a way to contribute to “wicked problems” and the UN Sustainability Goals.
Over the summer we will be sharing writing by SciComm students, some of which is from coursework during our degrees, some of which is us building our portfolio and sharing with the world what we can do.
We will also be publishing a shortened podcast series for the university break of mini episodes exploring podcasts created by students in the UWA undergraduate course, Science Presentations.
Next year we’re excited to bring you more full-length episodes in another season of The SciComm Collective – including a diverse mix of science communicators from all over Australia… and the world!
If you’d like to be featured on our podcast, do get in touch at scompodcast@gmail.com.
Until then, we hope you enjoy listening back to our first season. On behalf of all of us, thanks for tuning in.
Catch you next time.
– Emma Gill
Season 1 Director
All opinions on this website are representative of individuals and are not representative of The University of Western Australia. The University of Western Australia is not liable for content herein.
