Helping researchers communicate their science

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research 1:42 Helping researchers communicate their science

By:

Lee Friesland

19 May 2025 117

Virginia Tech's Center for Communicating Science provides workshops for professional development with the goal to make research communication more personal, direct, spontaneous, and responsive.

"You got your favorite breakfast foods in mind? " "Go !" There's a concept called the curse of knowledge. When any of us knows something so well that we forget how it feels not to know that. All of us in our own fields, in our own expertise get lost in the fact that it's very specific, and we need to connect with other people in language that they can understand, with concepts that they can understand, and through stories that they can understand. We try to create and support opportunities for researchers to build their muscles of connection and communication. We really want researchers to learn to listen to the people they're communicating with and to recognize that it's a two way conversation. It's not just them doing a data dump on people. I work with cooperative extension, which means that most of the audience I'm working with is the general public. I'm always just looking for new ways to kind of stretch and grow. We're kind of doing some activities that make us think, make us feel, make us move. And get uncomfortable so that we can show up more comfortably in our day to day work, and do a better job reaching people. We help them get into their bodies and into their hearts and remember what it feels like to find joy in the work, and they start to think about different ways that they could explain their work. It's just a person who's doing something really cool that they really care about. So tell your story, that's what we want them to do.

Academics

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Global Impact