Kill Two Birds with One Stone: Experiencing Science and Communicating Science in a Single Setting

Author : Andy Ka-Leung Ng

Abstract :In the university setting in Hong Kong, non-science students lack a chance to experience a scientific investigation while science students often do not have an opportunity to communicate science with non-expert audiences. In this project, we attempted to provide a solution via a general education (GE) course. All undergraduate students, regardless of their major disciplines, are required to take a science-related GE course, ‘In Dialogue with Nature’. Students have to read and understand excerpts from various texts including ‘On the Origin of Species’ and ‘DNA: The Secret of Life’ and discussed the perennial questions that the texts bring up. While they learn about some scientific experiments, they never got a chance of doing them. In view of this, we offered the students some hands-on experiment workshops demonstrated by senior students from the Faculty of Science. Before the workshops, science communication training was provided to the senior students through lectures, experimental sessions and museum visit to equip them with the necessary skills. In this presentation, the design, implementation and evaluation of the project will be discussed

Keywords :Science education, science communication, general education, student engagement, Hong Kong

Conference Name :International Conference on Teaching, Educational, and Learning (ICTEL-25)

Conference Place London, UK

Conference Date 13th May 2025