Ctrl Alt Tech
Welcome to Ctrl Alt Tech, the podcast where technology meets curiosity. Each episode, our host chats with expert guests to explore a wide range of STEM topics. We aim to make complex ideas accessible and exciting, so join us for thought-provoking discussions and, hopefully, learn something new along the way!
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Ctrl Alt Tech
Episode 4: SciComm with Em Haydon
In this episode, we chat to Em Haydon about SciComm, public engagement, and online learning.
Em is a digital education and public engagement professional with an extensive background in science communication (SciComm) and public engagement. She is currently working as a Digital Education Developer at the University of St Andrews.
If you are interested in finding out more about this area, check out the following resources:
STEM Ambassador programme: https://www.stem.org.uk/stem-ambassadors
#Scicomm Tips on notion (Em contributed to this)
Organisations to know about in SciComm/PE – PCST, BIG (Em’s personal favourite), NCCPE, ASDC, STEM Ambassadors, National STEM Centre, ASE
Great newsletter resource – The SciCommer by Heather Doran
Emma 00:00
Okay, cue the music.
Emma 00:13
Hello and welcome to Ctrl Alt Tech. I'm your host, Emma, and today I am joined by Em Haydon. Em has an extensive background in science communication and public engagement, and is currently working as a digital education developer at the University of St Andrews. Today we chat about all things SciComm, public engagement and online learning. Let's get into today's episode. Hi Em, welcome to this episode of Ctrl Alt Tech. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Em 00:43
Thank you for having me.
Emma 00:45
Could we kick off a little bit by getting a bit of background on you? Could you tell us more about who you are and what you do?
Em 00:51
So I am Em broadly, learning and engagement professional. I currently work at the University of St Andrews as a digital learning developer. But I've had quite a fluid career. I've not usually known what I've wanted to do or do next, which I think is becoming increasingly common, and especially in kind of the sort of third space professionals are people doing jobs that sort of sit around bigger topics, or don't sit in academia or sort of sit next to another industry, for lack of a better explanation.
Emma 01:21
Yeah. I love that term fluid career is a nice way of describing it. Could we dig into that a little bit more actually, how did you end up in this area then? If it's not something with a direct path from your GCSEs or you hear about in school.
Em 01:35
Yup. I think all the jobs I've had, are not ones that I knew about school. I think that's for like a mix of reasons. And I think all the jobs I've had, have been a mix of kind of luck, good timing and always trying to take opportunities that looked like they were a good fit or at least interesting.
Em 01:56
So, I sort of took the sort of science route at A-level. And when it came to looking at universities, my mum would always say “pick something that you'd want to stay up late reading about, because that's probably what you'll end up doing”.
Emma 02:08
So that is good advice.
Em 02:09
So that was sort of genetics and cell biology that did that for me. They just kind of felt like a biological puzzle. So that always, intrigued me. I visited Andrew's, I had a second cousin was at the Uni at the time, and nothing came close, after that. That was it really. There was other Uni’s that I applied to, but really nothing was, nothing was in the same league.
Em 02:29
At Uni, I loved being at Uni, but actually I didn't love my course as much as I thought. Mainly because I hated being in the lab. I didn't understand what was happening, I didn't, I wasn't just very good at being in the lab. I managed to make mitochondria to grow faster after adding cyanide, which for anyone with any basic biology knowledge knows that that's the opposite of what should happen.
Em 02:50
It just wasn't it wasn't a good fit. It just didn't work. Again, in the kind of like luck and right place, right time, I came across an ad for a small student run science magazine. I thought, that's still science, but it's not a lab. So I guess I'll go and see what that's about, and that ended up being a really big part of the last two years of, university for me.
Em 03:09
And yeah, that really opened up a whole new. Okay, I don't have to give up on science, but I don't have to be in a lab, kind of, thought train. It also helped me get an internship at the Wellcome Trust between my third and fourth year in the editorial department. And again, that really just gave me new options.
Em 03:27
As I finished my degree, I did, as pretty much every new grad does, which is just apply for as many things as possible and hope one thing sticks. Nothing did. I was already looking into Master’s opportunities for myself, but it is Edinburgh that I went to. So, I did a Master's in Science Communication and Public Engagement. Getting experience in SciComm placements as part of a degree meant that I finished my degree with real-life experience under my belt to then go forward and apply for jobs.
Em 03:54
So yeah, that really kind of helped push me forward in that, in that direction. After my Master's, I got a job at a science center; Originally just as an all-round science communication, science communicator, which basically meant I could talk to anybody that came into the science center or that we went out to visit on any topic, to any age people.
Em 04:16
So, I talked about dinosaurs to families. I talked about forensics to elderly community groups, I talked about space to school groups, literally any age, any topic. I've probably done it, which was a really good kind of like try it in the deep end, just get on with it. I ended up doing a lot of work with the schools team, and I eventually got a job in that team.
Em 04:35
So, I particularly like the structure of that work that we were designing and running workshops for specific school groups, which felt up to me a bit more structured than the work, just sort of more generally in a science center, which just appeals to how I work as a person. Then COVID came along. Unsurprisingly, working in a science center during COVID is not a good piece of maths.
Em 04:55
So, I was furloughed, which actually was great. I was sort of two years post-finishing Master’s and quite honestly needed a break. So I actually very much enjoyed it, but was aware that my job might not come back or might not come back in the way that it was. So, I got a job at Sanger down in Cambridge, which is where I met Emma.
Em 05:13
The job was originally sort of meant to be like my previous job, so running sort of trips to the campus or going out to visit schools. But obviously during COVID that looked a bit different. So I started a webinar project, which went really well. We had over a thousand attendees from every continent in the world in the first year.
Em 05:31
So over COVID, it was really, really popular. After a sort of year or so, I became the manager of the sort of schools piece of work and I continued to grow what we did, as we sort of were able to open up the campus to schools, visiting and going out to schools. I kind of realized around this point, though, that actually it was the online offer that I was more interested in,
Em 05:50
I kind of felt like I'd done my time of the in-person school group stuff. I loved it, but it is exhausting. You are with, you know, groups of 30 to 40 children or teenagers most days. And I was just sort of I felt like I could finish that piece of my career. I developed a training course for professionals on site, scientists on site to upskill in science engagement.
Em 06:13
I developed a future learning course, aimed at teachers to help them upskill in topics around bioscience. I developed a virtual work experience. Yeah, it was this sort of package of stuff that led me to go, and I'm ready for this to be the main thing that I do, rather than those being the sort of side projects to my job.
Em 06:29
Yeah. So a mix of that. I'm wanting to move back to Scotland. I applied for and got my current role, so I currently work in our digital education team, helping academics build online courses about their area of expertise. So that is sort of slightly long-winded version of how I got to where I am now.
Emma 06:46
No, thank you so much for sharing that. Quite a varied journey, and I love hearing about non-typical routes in science. I guess that you're not just, you know, it's science at school, at uni. I love the lab and then I'm doing lab work like that. You can still be in science but not be doing test-tubes, and microscopes and the whole thing. I'm going to get into your current role a little bit more.
Emma 07:13
But first I want to I want to maybe stay broadly on science communication or which I might refer to as SciComm. Throughout the rest of our conversation, how would you describe SciComm? Does it vary from like public engagement work? Are they are they separate things, and let's yeah, chat a little bit more about what that is, and why it's important.
Em 07:37
I say that science communication in its broader sense, is any interaction between a specialist in a science topic and a non-specialist in that field. Which means that science communication can happen between two scientists that are not specialists in the same field. This can be one-way. So, this could be somebody talking on the radio or doing that kind of informational piece.
Em 07:57
It can be writing a policy report, but it also can be two-way or collaborative. This bit is where it then overlaps with public engagement. So public engagement really broadly, is sharing research knowledge and ideas between research specialists and the public. So public engagement isn't unique to science. It happens with other research disciplines, in the humanities and social sciences.
Em 08:20
But you can't have that overlap of such communication and public engagement. And things like this would include science festivals, working with school groups in research and not just delivering to a school group, but kind of getting them actively involved in doing a part of the research or, yeah, collecting samples or being part of the results or sort of citizen science events.
Em 08:42
So again, where you might ask members of the public to, the RSPB Bird Watch is a great example. You're asking people to help with the data collection. That is them doing the science. So that is a two-way engagement. So yeah, they are there's sort of a Venn diagram and I think the traditional things we think about a SciComm is that overlapping bit.
Em 09:01
But there are other parts of SciComm which confusingly is often abbreviated SciComms or scientific communications, which tends to be the one-way or the more one-way avenues where you're communicating scientific information. So, lots of terms.
Emma 09:17
Ok thank you for that distinction. I like SciComm versus SciComms and also chatting a little bit more about public engagement.
Emma 09:25
I might touch on that for a second because that, as you mentioned, is how you/me met. At the Wellcome Genome Campus here. There's a great, actually, I think culture of public engagement and outreach and it's a topic that I love discussing and love doing, really. I've been fortunate in the roles that I've had so far to, be able to teach Python to teachers and run hackathons.
Em 09:52
And here on campus, I actually have engaged with some of the school groups like you mentioned. There's like 30 or 40 school kids come along. And that can be tiring, but has actually been some of the most fun things that I've done here on campus. I actually, recently had, went along as we, we have like the “Meet the Scientist” with scientists being the sort of broad term for someone who works here, who contributes to the science, and they work group of maybe 8 to 10 year olds.
Emma 10:22
And there was this really energetic group and these twins in particular, who had so many questions about DNA and genetics and would their DNA look the same. And what does it mean if they're twins and what is their, like, genetic makeup, like different to their school group or to their own like sibling. But it's not twin. And they were coming out with all these amazing questions.
Emma 10:47
And I think that's, something I love so much about public engagement that, as you mentioned, it's a two-way street.
Em 10:55
Yeah.
Emma 10:56
Teaching your like giving information. You're getting something back no matter the topic, no matter the age group.
Em 11:01
Yeah.
Emma 11:02
And that's that sort of interaction just makes me think so much about how do I explain,
Em 11:07
Yeah.
Emma 11:08
what I work on and why I do it in such a, in such a simple way. So, I, I wondered then if you could share more about why you think public engagement is important and why should we do outreach, why should we like, yeah, engage with communities outside of our own science bubble?
Em 11:28
But for sure, I think part of it is what you said that the scientist or anyone working in a specialty where they're spending a lot of time with a topic, I think sometimes stepping out from the topic and talking to other people, and I've heard loads, people say it's like re-energize them on the topic or give them the new kind of, oh yeah, this is why I'm doing it.
Em 11:46
And I think anyone that's ever spent a lot of time doing one thing, even if you love it, and even if you loved it at the start when you're deep in something, I think you can kind of start losing the passion or it kind of kind of drop in a way where all you can see is the work that has to be done, rather than the why of what you're doing it.
Em 12:03
I think talking to anybody, but especially interested people can really just kind of help you, like regain that kind of passion and interest. I think we've seen from COVID that there's like a public health need, especially on the bioscience side of things, that ability for the public to have a good understanding of science and research. And I think really importantly, it's not about blind trust.
Em 12:24
I don't like it whenever the aim of SciComm is just gaining trust because I don't think that's fair. I don't think it's achievable, and it's not about people just blindly trusting what anybody says. I think it's about having a health literate or a science literate society; So, that people can make their own decisions, because very rarely in science is there just one answer or a one size fits all.
Em 12:48
And we saw this with the COVID vaccines. It's not about just saying everyone should have it full stop. Don't question us. It's about saying we've got this vaccine. Here's why it is as safe as we can possibly make it. Here's why we were able to do it faster than usual. Here's what the benefits are. Here's the potential negatives.
Em 13:04
Overall, we still think is a beneficial thing to have, and then hoping that the public responds to that and goes along with you, but not blindly. They've kind of been able to make an informed decision. So to me that's a really big part of it. There's an accountability piece that a lot of science is funded by the taxpayer so that, to me, science should be benefiting humanity and non-humanity.
Em 13:25
So you can't know that your science is beneficial to people if you don't talk to people. So I think those two, to me, it should just actually be just like a part of how science happens that it should have to involve people in different ways, obviously, depending on, on the science. And then I think the third part for me is the around sort of jobs and aspirations for us and
Em 13:45
just for young people, but for any people, because people can make career changes at any points in their life. Science on the whole pays well. I know that a lot of us wish it paid better. Especially if you look at sort of research versus industry. But it does pay well. It pays above average of jobs, in the UK anyway.
Em 14:02
And yet a lot of people don't see it as a career path option for them because of lack of access or lack of or, sort of stereotypes about what a scientist is or who scientist like, who can be a scientist. So I think there's a sort of social justice element there that, you know, we want people to have good sort of social mobility, which is a term we can use to describe sort of people moving beyond the circumstances in which they were born in a positive or negative way, just they're not sort of stuck to the world, if you like, that they were born into you not say there's anything wrong, but people
Em 14:32
that don't want to make a change from their sort of family norm, but that they feel able to take up a role because they're interested in it, not because they feel like it's not for them. There's a wealth of stats on, especially girls and minorities, ethnic groups around sort of career aspirations, and it's around the age of seven that loads of people are not in those categories,
Em 14:50
stop seeing science as an option for them, at the age of seven. So, by age seven, if you've not interacted with a scientist in the broader sense or seen science as some sort of positive thing, you don't have to love to think it's the best thing ever. But if you could just not have thrown it out of your bucket of options by that age, I think that's really important.
Em 15:08
One of my previous bosses used to say when we worked at the Science Center, his yeah, we'd sort of talked a lot about what, you know, KPIs or outcomes and all this fancy language; For him, he'd often say, if a kid comes to a place that has science in his name and they have a good time, that in itself is a win.
Em 15:24
They may never come back to a place like that, they may never have otherwise done that. So, if they see the word science and don't hate it, that in itself is a job well done.
Emma 15:34
Yeah, yeah, that's so true. Age seven is really young to me. Like to think a little bit more about the importance of even just here on campus, like the school groups that come in and that we engage with. I really resonate with, what you said about the idea of who can be a scientist, that's always been a big motivator of mine, of why I like public engagement. I guess just personal experience of, of growing up and not having it, a huge amount of role models or knowing people who worked in, in science or in tech or, yeah, knowing what their job was like or what they did yet did they, did they look like me?
Emma 16:16
Did they come from the same background as me? Like, is that a possibility? For me? That's always been a big motivator of mine. So it makes yeah, a lot of sense that, that would that would feed into like why it's important to, to do the, to have these, these initiatives in these programs and these opportunities for engagement for sure.
Emma 16:43
In your experience of public engagement, then is there anything that you have particularly enjoyed about it or found challenging about it?
Em 16:55
I will start on the enjoyment side first. You talked about sort of working with that age group of sort of 8 to 10 year olds. They were always my favorite.
Emma 17:02
So fun.
Em 17:03
They I think where they are developmentally sort of physically and mentally means that they can really start to engage with like quote unquote, proper science, right?
Em 17:12
They can actually handle equipment safely. You can really get them involved in stuff in a way that a little bit younger becomes a little bit more challenging. I also think that age, they're really good at taking something that you've not talked about, something just from a different lesson at school or from outside school, just anything. And taking what you said and putting them together and coming up with questions that I could have prepped for hours for a session and never come up with that question.
Em 17:37
And that always what I always really enjoyed most about working at all age groups, but specifically that one is it really pushed you to answer their questions and pushed you to sort of see how they put two and two together and got their sort of outcome. I did an outreach session once talking about whether, life could exist on Mars.
Em 17:55
We're talking about, like, things you need for life and how we can support life and all of this sort of stuff. And there's one kid, put his hand up and said, what if the type of life on Mars is so different from anything we've ever seen that we couldn't even find it if it was there? And you're sort of standing there,
Emma 18:11
Blown away!
Em 18:12
Yeah, that's my session out of the water. So I think just bits,
Emma 18:18
That’s incredible!
Em 18:19
of interesting questions and especially working with even younger kids, I always had an ethos of trying to find the value in their answer. When the kids choose to answer you, especially if they're sort of 4 or 5, that's really scary. I'm some, you know, an unknown adult that's come into their space or that they've come to our space.
Em 18:36
They've answered a question that if you've ever worked with 4 or 5 year olds, often seems completely nonsensical or like they just pulled it from nowhere, but often that is they have that has come from somewhere. So again, it really forces you to find the answer. So another example again happens to be about space. We're talk about sort of the night sky and what, what might we see.
Em 18:57
And this kid came out with like I think she said something like caterpillars in the sky. And we were like, I'm not sure about that. Maybe a tree and you're trying to, like, give her credit. You really want to, like, credit her answer and not to be like, no, you're wrong. It's right. It's got the same. So ethos is comedy like it's yes and you want to find the value.
Emma 19:13
Let's get it.
Em 19:15
So we dug and dug a little bit more and it turned out that she like she'd watch like a cartoon. I think I had an older sibling and I think actually what it came from was wormholes. So she like, actually had to she actually had thought of something but like couldn't get it across. So again, it's like that digging in like that, trying to find where that thing came from. So you're not going, no your science answer is wrong. It's a let's like let's dig a bit further.
Emma 19:37
Yeah. I'm going to explore this with you.
Em 19:39
Yeah.
Emma 19:40
Let's figure this out instead of just shutting it down.
Em 19:42
Yeah, sure. I think challenges I think there's obviously practical challenges around sort of time and resource. As you said, the Wellcome Genome campus does have a good culture around giving time to for people to be involved in the sort of cycle of public engagement activities. But that doesn't happen everywhere. It's often seen as sort of an add on and especially in more traditional academic settings. Anything that's an add on tends to fall to the most junior, women, and people of color. That just sort of tends, and that not just to the public engagement, it's for administrative tasks,
Em 20:15
it's those sort of non-promotable activities, as a bucket of things. So, again it's kind of breaking through those barriers as well, but obviously and again. For me, there's then a torness between from a non-stereotyping and like inclusivity perspective and showcasing diversity. I would love to see women, young people and people of color doing SciComm. But I don't want that to come from a place of they're the only ones that have been allowed to do it.
Em 20:41
And so that can be quite a difficult, sort of, yeah, Pull. So yeah, there's all those sort of and that those sorts of challenges come up with just doing any project alongside a main job anyway. Working specifically with school groups, there's obviously challenges and just sort of practically setting those things up.
Emma 20:58
Yeah. Of course.
Em 20:59
Anyway, that has a team that does it sort of supports through that can really help.
Em 21:03
There's also the STEM ambassador scheme that essentially tries to help.
Emma 21:06
Really good.
Em 21:07
Yeah. So they try and help in places where there isn't a team that kind of do that comes before them. So they might set up an opportunity. They basically have a website where, teachers in schools can kind of put-up kind of requests for a scientist to come in and talk on their careers day or to, we're running a workshop on plants.
Em 21:26
Can we have a plant scientist? And you can kind of choose to sign up to that so that that really helps break down those, like just practical barriers of like, how would I find a school? How would I make sure I was, you know, talk to the right people or doing it safely because there's a, you know, a safeguarding aspect to working with young people. So yeah, I think those are immediate challenges.
Emma 21:46
Yeah. And I, I would like to say, given the positives and the challenges and why we think it's good to to do these activities, not just to encourage people to try out a public engagement activity or an outreach activity, like in your workplace or in your community. Give it a go and see if it's like if it's for you.
Emma 22:08
And there's also there's so many different types of activities that are possibilities for you to, to help out with. And it's, in my experience, been such a like, welcoming and fun community. And I've only ever worked with like enthusiastic groups of people. So would really just, yeah, encourage anyone to get involved with some public engagement if, if the opportunity arises.
Emma 22:33
I would like to move on from the public engagement to talk a little bit about your current role, which is in digital education development. But if you could tell me in your own words, what does a digital education developer do? And maybe what is like a typical day, or week entail for you?
Em 21:51
For sure. I'll start with saying that like, yeah, so my job title is Digital Education Developer. Broadly different institutes will have different names for this, which could look like instructional designer or e-learning designer or, yeah. Similar to alot of these fields, different terms are used by different people. Where I work, what it means is that we help academics or subject specialists develop content for online courses. So, we have two big buckets of stuff that we work on.
Em 23:22
We have non-credit bearing short courses, and we have full Master's programs online. I work more on the short courses, which is a bit more like work I did previously. What I'm essentially working with the academic, to talk through the ideas that they've got on the content that they want to get across to their audience. I’m helping them through what we call sort of learning design processes.
Em 23:44
So thinking about, okay, you've got this stuff, you want to talk about, how can we break that up into different learning activities. So that it's not all just someone reading a page or watching a video? How can they do some active learning, if that's a quiz, if that's a forum, if that's another active task to go and do.
Em 24:03
And then on the short courses, I also build out that content on our on our learning platform. At other institutes that have bigger teams, those actually might be split into two different jobs. Sometimes big places have people that just work on the learning design and people that just work on basically the web design or the sort of the building element, we do both.
Em 24:21
A typical day or week might look like; So this afternoon I'm meeting with one of my academics. We are sort of halfway through, her design and build sort of stage of the, the course production. So, she has sent me content on a Word doc. We've gone back and forth on comments of sort of like how we could format something, or there's been, bits where I've sort of gone, I'm not sure this really fits the audience.
Em 24:47
I think maybe we've pitched it a little bit too high. How can we sort of rephrase that, or even just format it differently to help with sort of readability? I've had done kind of an initial build, kind of go is something of like how it might look, and then we'll meet to kind of chat through where the course has got to, what changes we want to make, then having some sort of consistent touchpoints throughout the course.
Em 25:07
So, a lot of it, there's a sort of bigger aspect around sort of project management, which I really like, kind of seeing something through end-to-end. I've been playing a role in developing those processes of how do we start from a, how do we move them through a series of meetings, activities, guidance, to get to an end point by a specific agreed date.
Em 25:25
I work in a team where there's, four people in my job role, which has been really nice, and not a dynamic I've had before. I've usually worked in my previous jobs, where I've been either one of two or the only person in that role; Obviously still in a team of people doing similar stuff. But it's been a nice dynamic of having four of us doing equivalent roles where we've really been able to sort of bounce ideas and sort of really co-develop projects. That's been really nice as well.
Emma 25:49
Yeah, it seems online learning has become more popular even just in the last few years, probably accelerated by the COVID pandemic and as we all get use to remote work and remote learning, I am curious to know do you find then are there many differences between classroom based learning and online learning and do think there is anything unique to remote learning?
Em 26:13
For sure. I think remote learning and its broader sense has existed for like quite a long time. But I think, yeah, the presence of being specifically online remote learning has grown. And I think, I think we were maybe always moving in this trajectory. And I think Covid sort of bumped us off about five years. I think, I think when you really pull it back to sort of really good learning design, to really thinking through, what are we, what's the purpose, who's the audience, what do they need?
Em 26:42
Where are they at meeting them, where they are? Where will this interaction happen? What's the pros and cons of that? How do we make that inclusive and accessible? Who am I in this space? What am I bringing? If you bring it down to that level, all learning is learning. So whether it's remote, offline, like old school being sent CDs and textbooks, if it's in person, if it's online, but live, if it's online but not live,
Em 27:07
so asynchronous, I think at that level there's a lot of similarities and the learning design approach that we use in our team, which is called ABC learning from UCL. The ABC stands for something other than the alphabet. I can never remember what. That's not really important. The, its purpose is and it has been designed with online in mind but works for anything.
Em 27:27
Its whole thing is around taking, learning and breaking it down into six different types of learning experiences. So, you've got acquisition which is acquiring knowledge. So, this would be reading something, listening to something, watching a video very one-way passive learning. You've got discussion which as it says on the tin is discussing ideas or interactions; Either live or asynchronously. Collaborating again, as it says on the tin, working together on a project or an output.
Em 27:57
Practice, so, any activity where you're getting feedback that allows you to improve upon your learning. So this can be as simple as a self, like an automatically marked quiz where you can see what you've got right, see what you got wrong and improve from there. It can be reflective work, where you're kind of given prompts that allow you to reflect on your learning and improve from it.
Em 28:17
It can be, you know, question and answer in class where you're getting feedback from a teacher on whether you got the answer right, written assignments, all of that can have elements of practice in. You then got production; So literally making a thing and so writing an essay, you've produced the essay, making a poster, you've produced the poster. And the last one being investigation.
Em 28:36
So this is more kind of analytical or comparing or yeah, that sort of thing. So obviously these types can overlap, but you can use that in anything. You can use that or any combination of online, offline, live, asynchronous. So I think when you bring it down to that level, they have a lot of fundamentals in, similar. It's when you sort of start looking into, you know, those fundamental questions of sort of who are the audience, where are they, what skills that they have.
Em 29:02
Those are obviously a very different in person or online, because if you're online, you obviously care much more about the technology literacy, than you would if you were in person. Again, on the accessibility front, in person, you're worrying more about the physical space and the kit, and do you have a microphone so that everyone in the room can hear you?
Em 29:21
Is the door wide enough for wheelchairs? It's step-free access, all of those sorts of questions. Whereas online you're thinking more about, how you've used accessible HTML. How do you how do you like design stuff to, work against good online accessibility standards? So again, the like the fundamental is the same. But the application for some areas is obviously very different, if that makes sense.
Emma 29:45
Yeah, that totally does. Thank you. That was a really great explanation. I appreciate your explanation of kind of the different the different principles around learning. And, that, if we take a step back. Yeah, learning is learning and if we design it, well, for sure. I think I'm going to wrap-up there. Thank you so much Em. Before I let you go, I want to ask you our quick-fire question round.
Em 30:12
Excellent.
Emma 30:13
So couple of questions. First thing that comes to your mind. Okay. Dark mode or light mode?
Em 30:20
Dark mode, unless it's a word document.
Emma 30:23
So could you tell me one app or gadget that you cannot live without?
Em 30:28
App or gadget? Oh, that's a hard one. Um. My Google calendar, me and my wife share a Google Calendar. That is how we know when the bins go out and when we're away, and when we're seeing friends and when we have to book a train ticket; it won't happen if it is not in there, it won't happen.
Emma 30:46
100%. I am all aboard the shared G-Cal train. And lastly, tell me a scientist or tech innovator that you admire?
Em 30:55
Ooh, I think going back to my OG SciComm roots, it has to be Simone Giertz, I probably mispronounced her surname. She is a sort of innovator, YouTuber, and I think she does everything that kids do, when you're working with them; That she like follows curiosity to a level that adults don't usually let themselves. So she'll come up with,
Em 31:17
if you've not seen her YouTube and stuff, she'll come up with a crazy idea and then actually follow through on it, in a way that most adults would be like, wouldn't it be cool if? And then they go, haha, never mind, she'll actually make it, innovate it and problem solve. And I think she does a really good job of showing that most STEM practically.
Em 31:35
Not the sort of learning in university bit, but actually doing STEM, is more about creative problem solving with the side of knowledge, rather than knowledge first and skill second. She's also just really funny, so that helps.
Emma 31:46
Oh, I love that. I'm gonna check that out. Thank you so much again, for joining us today. I've really enjoyed our conversation.
Em 31:54
Thanks for having me.
Emma 31:56
That is a wrap for today's episode. I want to say a big, big thank you again to Em Haydon for joining me. If you would like to learn more about the world of SciComm and public engagement, please check out today's show notes, which include a list of resources kindly shared with us by Em to help you find out more. Thank you all so much for listening and join us next time on Control Alt tech.
