One of the key issues arising from Talk to US! was finding ways that partnerships can be maintained when a key individual leaves either the university or a particular school. This can be a significant problem and is largely due to the fact that involvement in projects of this nature tends to be on a voluntary basis rather than a specific part of a job role. This also causes difficulties in communication between individuals who already have extremely busy workloads, which can make arranging face to face meetings or agreeing the content of a given activity very difficult.
Discover Oceanography has been running at the University of Southampton (UoS) Waterfront Campus based at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) for several years. The programme involves going out on a research vessel with university staff to collect samples of plankton and other marine organisms as well as measuring the environment in which they live using secchi disks, temperature and salinity probes, and sediment grabs. This programme has been extremely successful in enabling pupils and teachers to gain a real insight into the research that happens at the UoS Waterfront Campus as well as providing a memorable learning experience relating to a local environment which cannot be replicated in the classroom.
‘The benefits to mixed-ability pupils in terms of their motivation and self-esteem are clear. The first group that were involved over a year ago still talk about it now… they got to see science in a different light and thought being out on the oceanography boat was amazing.’
Teacher from local school
One of the schools involved through the Talk to US! project put together a scheme of work for Year 8 pupils connecting their Discover Oceanography trip to the curriculum – which became our first ‘Online Educational Resource for Schools and Colleges’ to do so, the first of many!
In the first year of development there were some teething problems because the material covered on the boat trip did not entirely fit the content of the scheme of work that was written. However, in the second year, responsibility for coordinating and developing the Discover Oceanography programme was formally included within the role of a Senior Research Assistant, who had been involved with the programme from the beginning. This led to a shared vision and enabled the teacher involved in planning the scheme of work to thoroughly discuss the content of the lessons and boat trip with a member of academic staff who understood both the science behind what was being covered and the practicalities involved in taking school pupils out on the boat.
Originally, Discover Oceanography sessions simply included the sampling techniques on the boat, but through Talk to US! schools requested that visits last for a whole day in order to justify the work involved in organising bringing pupils out of school. Planning these extra sessions had been a bit ‘hit and miss’ in the past, but having an internal contact who was familiar with the rooms, sessions and expertise available proved invaluable.
Several different sessions including plankton identification, aquarium food web activities, a lecture on the nature of oceanography, and other practical activities were planned and offered to schools to create a tailor made visit for each school. Another advantage of expanding the visit day was that it enabled groups to be split between the boat and onshore activities, improving the pupil experience, which was evident in the pupil feedback collected as part of the Talk to US! project. This is a fantastic example of reflective
practice, of embedding evaluation and reflection into the delivery process, and of the importance of partnership working in creating the most enjoyable and highest impact experience for everyone. Such good practice is contagious – by connecting all the activities through the Talk to US! project, other teachers and researchers came forward to create similar suites of online resources. These in turn flourished once they found a permanent home – for the past few years they have been managed by paid UoS internship students, always overlapping so the current intern can support the next intern, and each bringing their own fantastic ideas. We now have a comprehensive platform and series of templates for online engagement which new projects can easily drop into.
The work of the internship students and the Senior Research Assistant show how valuable it is to have engagement work included in workload. If an individual leaves their position then their replacements will have a clear framework to continue this work and an incentive to do so. With the exception of LifeLab, and the coordination of Dragonfly Day which is managed by the university WP team, Discover Oceanography was the only project working with Talk to US! with dedicated staff and independent funding streams. However, if the desired culture change is achieved then it is more likely that appointments of this nature will be made in other departments – and, perhaps, eventually, in schools and colleges as well as universities.