Abstract:

Since the latest decades, society is facing challenges that only can be overcome if the knowledge is the cornerstone to the social development. Therefore, the level of education and accessibility to information are needed to guarantee a critical thinking in the citizens. In this regard, the transfer of knowledge from the academia (knowledge generators) to the companies (knowledge transformers) with help of governmental policies on regulating and encouraging the knowledge transfer. In this context, they will be stimulated to recognize the problems by understanding the use of resources with new approaches based on a critical thinking. Furthermore, it is important for society to be aware of the importance of science and its discoveries and to stimulate and motivate the new generations so that from an early age they are aware of what science contributes to society. Although at present there are a lot of academic strategies for scientific dissemination, their impact on the public and in more detail on kids is still unknown.

Bearing this on mind, this study aims to unravel how the influence of scientific fairs in kids aged 8-10 is. Two different aspects were evaluated:
a) if they expand their knowledge in a specific field and
b) if this acquired knowledge were retained months later.

The results of this study were obtained from an exam months later after they did different interactive activities at Pharmacy Faculty (UCLM) in fields as diverse as Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Technology, Microbiology or Neuroanatomy.

Although we are aware that more analysis are needed to extract a general conclusion (like for example increment of the number of students under evaluation or checking if they know the answer before the activity) we believe that the information of this “proof-of concept” analysis could be used to understand if there is any influence of dissemination scientific information on kids and what it is more important how those activities could be improved to achieve a better knowledge transfer.

Keywords:

Knowledge transfer, Scientific dissemination, Scientific fairs, Scientific knowledge.