Guide: Developing your skills in public engagement
- Section:
- Skills & knowledge
Introduction
Whether you are a complete beginner or experienced practitioner, it can be too easy to put thinking about yourself and your own needs to the bottom of the ‘to do’ list. This may not serve you in the long run; we all need to keep our skills up to date.
Planning your development has many advantages. Some needs are not easily or quickly ‘fixed’; you may need to discuss shadowing others, arrange being away from work to attend a course, and you need time to organise this. It’s better to face a ‘skills gap’ (better known as ‘something I need to know how to do for my public engagement commitments but don’t’) sooner, rather than wait until it causes you lots of time-wasting further down the line.
This guide will help you to hone your skills by focussing on the following steps:
- What are your public engagement goals?
- Which skills and attributes do you need to achieve those goals?
- Skills audit: which areas do you need to develop?
- Development plan: how will you develop those skills?
- Reflect on your progress
Guidelines and approach
Step 1: What are your public engagement goals?
To start, it is often helpful to reflect on your current level of experience and what you would like to achieve in the future. This table highlights some useful areas to consider:
Job/ Role |
Public Engagement Experience |
Interests |
Time & Opportunities |
|
If you are an academic, a research grant or group may have a specific requirement to engage with a public audience |
Are you completely new to public engagement? |
Type of activity: writing, digital media, filming, presenting, event planning etc? |
How much time can you realistically commit to doing public engagement each month? |
|
If you are an administrator your interest might be more on how to coordinate or manage public engagement activities, |
Do you want to continue to develop your skills in a particular area? Perhaps working with schools? |
Audience: school children, families, policymakers, the media etc? |
How much time can you realistically commit to PE professional development each month? |
|
If you are a communications or knowledge exchange professional, you might be interested in developing advanced skills in a particular area e.g. video editing. |
Alternatively, are you keen to explore other areas of public engagement?
|
Type of event: festival workshop, café style session, large audiences, small audiences etc? |
Is your line manager or supervisor supportive? |
|
|
Are you looking to consolidate years of experience? |
|
Do you have deadlines for current PE projects? |
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Are there any upcoming opportunities? |
Download a copy of this table (PDF 515kb)
Goals should be SMART: Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. Examples include:
‘I want to develop and present a workshop for families around my research on renewable energy as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science in 2011’
‘My public engagement project is going well, I plan to develop a series of podcasts as an extra resource in the run up to our final event in March 2012’
Suggested task: After thinking about your role, experience, interests, opportunities and the time you have, can you clarify some clear goals?
Step 2: Which skills and attributes do you need to achieve these goals?
In some ways, this is straightforward: if you want to make podcasts, you will need to have technical expertise and a good presenting style. However, there are other areas to consider, particularly around communication, reflection and empathy. These domains are critical to effective public engagement and are explored further in the public engagement attributes framework (PDF 494kb) developed by NCCPE and Graphic Science.
The attributes approach also makes it easier to see how developing skills in public engagement can be useful in other areas of your career for example, the capacity to build and sustain effective partnerships, adapting communications styles for different audiences and reflecting and learning from your experience.
Suggested task: List the attributes and skills required for your public engagement goals.
Step 3: Skills audit: which areas do you need to develop?
The skills audit is a tool which allows you to asses which public engagement skills you need to work on. It requires you to think honestly and widely about skills and experience and not just to to focus on those skills you already have and do well, applying levels to how your define your abilities. For example:
Skill or Attribute |
Description |
Evidence of Skill |
How I’m doing |
|
Communication |
Interviewing |
I have interviewed colleagues about their research. |
Good. Sometimes colleagues use a lot of jargon and can get off the point. It might be helpful to improve the briefing before the interview and to practise strategies for keeping an interview on topic. |
|
Technical skills |
Recording and editing film |
I have previously used a Flip camera and Microsoft Moviemaker software to create short video clips of colleagues talking about their research. |
Basic. The videos look a bit amateur and I’m not sure how to edit a longer programme. It would be good to try some other film formats. |
This skills audit template is a modified version of the template developed by The Institute for Academic Development at the University of Edinburgh. Your own institution may have something similar. Download a copy of this table (PDF 515kb)
Suggested task: Create a table using the list of public engagement skills and attributes you identified. Be honest and don’t underestimate yourself.
After you’re done
You may find it useful to highlight which of you public engagement activities would like to work on and develop. Skills that you feel you need to improve in and are important to you and your job/career (e.g. you’ve agreed to do this activity in a grant proposal) should be prioritised for action.
You can record the actions you want to achieve on a development plan.
Step 4: Development plan: how will you develop those skills and reflect on your progress?
To develop your skills in public engagement, there are lots of options including, but not limited to, training courses. For example, you could plan to:
- Simply go and find someone who knows how to do what you want to do, and ask them about it. For the flim editing example, is there a department within your institution who could provide advice? Or a local film school?
- Look for self-teaching materials. There are a lot of resources online.
- Read other sections of the NCCPE toolkit and/or other resources
- Seek out, or volunteer for, an event, activity or task that would help you develop the experience you are looking for. The British Science Association has a database of case studies
- Find out about relevant public engagement networks or groups in your institution
- Attend informal events, such as learning lunches and networking events
Your institution may host formal training courses that develop skills relevant to public engagement. There are also opportunities with national schemes such as Researchers in Residence, and many funders including the research councils provide training and development opportunities. To find out more, please refer to our Training section
For more in-depth development, there are also several postgraduate level courses you can access.
When you are planning what training or development activity you wish to undertake, it is also worth considering how you prefer to learn.
Think about whether you like to:
- Actively participate in activities, either on your own, or in groups.
- Spend time reading and understanding concepts and ideas.
- Stand back, observe experiences and then reflect.
- Try out ideas and theories to see if they work in practice.
(Note: doing a mixture of activities – actively doing, theorising, reflecting, etc – can help to increase learning. It is helpful to consider your preferences but don’t just stick inside your learning comfort zone)
To plan the next steps you need to take you may find it useful to create a development plan. The template below was developed by The Institute for Academic Development at the University of Edinburgh, but your own institution may have a similar template.
EXAMPLE DEVELOPMENT PLAN FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
|
NAME: |
COVERING FROM: |
TO: |
|
What do I want/need to learn about public engagement? |
What will I do to achieve this? |
What resources and/or support do I need? |
How will I know I’ve succeeded? |
Target date for review and completion. |
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Download a copy of this table (PDF 515kb)
Step 5: Reflection
Reflecting on your experience is an important part of professional development. Taking the time to regularly review and evaluate your progress makes it easier for you to identify areas for improvement. Useful things to consider include:
- What went well?
- What would you do differently next time?
- What did other people think went well/ could be improved?
- How would you describe the overall experience? Fun? Boring? Scary? Exhilarating? Tedious? Etc etc
- Do you feel more or less confident about doing other public engagement activities? Why?
Practical tips
Sheila Thompson, Head of Researcher Development at the University of Edinburgh offers the following tips:
- Regardless of where you are in your career or how much experience you have in public engagement, DO think about where you want to go in the future and plan how you may get there;
- DON'T underestimate the skills you already possess;
- DON'T think development is just about attending courses - there are other ways you can develop skills and broaden your experience, e.g. using on-line materials, books, work-shadowing, taking part in activities;
- Do take the initiative in developing yourself and your skills;
- DO look for opportunities to develop new public engagement skills;
- DO build and use networks to support your career and professional development in public engagement;
- DO consider how you can gain useful feedback from your manager, peers, colleagues and the public groups you are interested in working with;
- DO keep records - log all your skills, training, work activities, projects, successes, etc It is useful to reflect on your progress and may also be something to use in an appraisal.
Other resources to help you
Download the resources (PDF 515kb) from this guide to help you
Find out more about the public engagement training opportunities available nationally in our training section
External Links
Find out more about planning personal and professional development more generally from
Vitae and the HE Academy
Author
This guide was produced by Graphic Science in collaboration with the NCCPE
