On 28 May 2010, at 10:40, Dominic McDonald wrote:
> One thing that we wondered was whether there is a need for some different ways of supporting the professional development of Science Communicators/Engagement Specialists, that might also lead to a recognised qualification. Currently there are some very good courses run by Imperial, UWE and the OU (among others), but they require a high level of commitment and they struggle to accredit informal prior experience.
>
> In order to inform our discussions we have put together a (very) short survey which explores a couple of the questions we are thinking about: if you have a spare 10 minutes then it would be really useful if you could have a look for us. You can see the survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HWTK7MF.
The survey's commendably short, and I appreciate the interest the working group is taking in this field. However, I do have a couple of observations:
Firstly, I note that all members of the working group represent institutions or groups of institutions/projects. They're all fine people and I'd trust any of them, but as a small business and freelancer none of them are representing my position. This strikes me as unfortunate, given the subject at hand.
That perhaps informs my second concern, which is that the survey captured how much I might be willing to invest in a new qualification (time, money, and number of people), but not my attitude towards the idea in the first place. Conceptually, some sort of professional accreditation process is probably a better fit for my own situation, and indeed that's something that's been discussed in and of the British Interactive Group on-and-off for several years.
Bluntly: this read to me like market research for a very specific (academic) product. I'm not convinced it's a product I want or need. How do I feed that view into the discussion, and how is the working group capturing the response of the freelance community?
--
Jonathan Sanderson
Broadcast & web video production; science communication consultancy & training
[log in to unmask] | 07768 890 981
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