Abstract:

Scientific dissemination is a task that requires a significant amount of effort and dedication, but it is not a skill that is valued in the CVs of research teaching staff (PDI). This means that they must dedicate a significant amount of their free time, outside working hours, to carrying out these initiatives, which have a great deal of positive effects on both the research and teaching professions. Additionally, the way scientific information is disseminated has evolved significantly in recent years, adopting new formats that are more contemporary and closer to the modern technologies that students are accustomed to using. These new tools are used not only for study, but also for recreation and communication.

Some young scientific popularizers use these tools, like social networks, YouTube, or comparable platforms, to create a novel, excellent, and highly appealing dissemination that can be used as teaching resources in the classroom. Furthermore, if the teacher engages in popular science tasks or activities, they will not only use the standard channels of communication that students are used to, but they will also potentially develop new communication skills, boosting their teaching abilities. This is the starting point of the current work, which will analyze the advantages of performing tasks related to scientific dissemination for the improvement of teaching capabilities.

The ability to communicate and engage students in a topic to be studied is a common factor in different didactic schemes such as problem-based learning (PBL) or case study approaches. In both cases, motivating and engaging students results in a crucial step to success in the aforesaid didactic approaches. Transferable skills from scientific dissemination could therefore benefit research teaching staff at that stage.

However, not only can scientific dissemination help to improve the communicative skills of the research teaching staff, in addition using already-disseminated talks can play an important role as an innovative educational resource itself. This innovative resource can be applied at both undergraduate and graduate degrees as well as at high school levels. This is the case, for instance, of the inspiring educative experience of “Recreo Naukas” for high school levels or the so-called outreach activity “Telecuriosity” at the “Escuela Técnica de Superior de Ingeniería de Telecomunicación (ETSIT)” at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV).

To conclude, in this contribution we explore that scientific dissemination can not only help research teaching staff to develop and improve their communication skills and, therefore, their teaching abilities. In addition, they can also play a very important role as in the innovative educational experience itself.

Keywords:

Scientific dissemination, teaching skills, transferable skills, outreach talks.