Outreach and Education Best Practice
Outreach has been a core part of Europlanet since the project started in 2005, but our activities are just a tiny part of a huge community of enthusiastic and dedicated science communicators across Europe doing fantastic work to engage members of the public, schools and teachers with planetary science. We aim to offer opportunities to share best practice on public engagement and education related to planetary science throughout our community, as well as funding and prizes to support initiatives.
Activities
As part of Europlanet projects, we organise a range of activities and events to support the sharing of outreach and education best practice:
From time to time, Europlanet holds webinars and online workshops for educators and outreach providers.
A two-day workshop, “Touching the Planets, Evaluating Excellence” was held in Athens on 2-3 July 2018. Amateur astronomers, teachers, early career researchers and outreach providers gathered to share their experiences of running outreach activities and their hone their evaluation skills. Read more…
A Europlanet Outreach Innovation Day was held to coincide with the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) 2016 in Athens on 4th July 2016.
Outreach at EPSC and other Europlanet meetings
Since its foundation, the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) has included a stream of outreach sessions.
EPSC 2018 in Berlin included 5 sessions related to outreach. If you weren’t able to make it, catch up on the abstracts and videos of some of the presentations.
EPSC 2017 in Riga included four sessions related to outreach. If you missed them, catch up on this summary of the presentations, abstracts and some pictures.
An outreach best practice session was held during the Europlanet Summer School 2017 on 25th July 2017.
Outreach Best Practice Sessions at EWASS
In collaboration with the Royal Astronomical Society, the European Astronomical Society and the European Space Agency, we have also co-convened two outreach best practice sessions during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS).
Report on “Making the Case for Astronomy – Engaging with Policy Makers” session at EWASS 2018 in Liverpool
Report in Astronomy & Geophysics Magazine on “Making the case for European astronomy and space science: public and political engagement” session at EWASS 2017 in Prague.
Outcomes
An outcome of the brainstorming session at the Europlanet Outreach Innovation Day in Athens in 2016 was the need to provide training for both scientists and journalists on their respective priorities and requirements in order to foster better communication. As a result of the workshop, Europlanet issued a special call for journalists, science communicators and lecturers in journalism to participate in an expert exchange of up to one week to visit Europlanet facilities and find out more about the scientific process.