Around 115 participants followed the keynote and subsequent panel discussion via Zoom on the afternoon of 13 December 2021. The event was the conclusion of this year's focus on "hard-to-reach groups", for which the OeAD held a series of online events and networking meetings. Hard-to-reach target groups were also the focus of the online event "Science for all? Hard-to-reach-groups in Citizen Science and Science Communication", a network meeting of Citizen Science and Young Science contact persons and at a network meeting of children's and youth universities. In these rounds, the OeAD exchanged ideas with those who address hard-to-reach groups in their projects and initiatives or would like to do so more often. The focus was on the question of how Austrian universities and research institutions or initiatives such as the children's universities succeed in reaching these groups.
Focus in the OeAD programmes
Two programmes that operate at the interface between education, science and society and have been coordinated by the OeAD since this year deserve special mention at this point: the Children's and Youth Universities and the successor programme to Sparkling Science, "Sparkling Science 2.0". Both focus on "hard-to-reach groups".
Within the framework of the children's and youth universities, activities are promoted that, for example, open up peripheral regions and reach out to children and young people with a migration background, with disabilities, etc. "Sparkling Science 2.0", which was launched in September of this year and is managed by the Centre for Citizen Science, promotes, among other things, the involvement of schools in peripheral areas or schools that have not yet been involved or have hardly been involved in citizen science activities. Accordingly, it is a great concern of the OeAD to take up the topic of hard-to-reach target groups with experts from different fields and to reflect on who or what hard-to-reach target groups actually are and to hear practical examples of how they can best be reached.
The use of language in science and culture communication
At the event "The limits of my language are the limits of my world" The use of language in science and culture communication, examples were shown of how science communication initiatives and the communication of culture and history can use language to reach (as many) people as possible, both pupils and adults, with the content.
After a welcome by Jakob Calice, Executive Director of the OeAD, Mirko Bischofberger from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) presented his experiences with "Science Communication through Artificial Intelligence" in a keynote speech. A project that will make EPFL's website content accessible in simple language will be launched from 2022. In this way, the university also wants to reach people who are not familiar with scientific language.
Afterwards, three other experts presented best-practice examples of how target groups that have not been reached so far can be addressed. Sandra Kobel, Head of the Department for Cultural Education at the Salzburg Museum, Axel Schacht, Head of the project "Vanishing Points - Moving Life Stories between Europe and the Middle East" by erinnern.at, and Bettina Dausien, Head of the Sparkling Science project "ZwischenWeltenÜbersetzen: On the Reconstruction of Biographical Experiences and Competencies of Refugee Youth in the Belonging Space of School" at the University of Vienna, gave insights into their experiences.
The subsequent panel discussion was moderated by Christian Kneil from Austria Presse Agentur, Head of APA-MultiMedia and editorially responsible for TopEasy, APA's news service in easy-to-understand language. The audience was invited to ask questions to the experts and to contribute their own experiences.
We would like to thank all the participants for their participation and lively discussions and are delighted that so many people attended the online event.
For those who could not be there, the slides of the presentations are available for download and the entire event can be watched on the OeaD YouTube channel. The recording will be available until 29 December 2021.
Event recording (in German)
Präsentationen
