Learn and collaborate with others to foster evolution literacy internationally!
Teaching ‘Game-It-Yourself’ in Health and Media Trust through PLAYMUTATION
Facilitators:
Liliana Vale Costa, University of Aveiro – DigiMedia, Portugal
Teresa Nogueira, INIAV – National Institute for Agrarian and Veterinary Research, Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c) & CHANGE – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Portugal.
Margarida Duarte, National Institute for Agrarian and Veterinary Research I.P. (INIAV, IP), Portugal
Duration: 2 hours
Description:
In this workshop, we will build a course curriculum given different healthcare scenarios integrating game-it-yourself activities, personas of different stakeholders, role-playing strategies, and textual mazes. This 2-hour workshop is under the projects PLAYMUTATION and YO-MEDIA- DigiMedia Research Centre (UIDB/05460/2020), being divided into the following activities: Intro to Game-It-Yourself Course Review Canvas; From Stakeholders’ Analysis to the Game Course Requirements and Application in Healthcare; Defining the competences, activities, and assignments; and Review, Reflection.
Increasing Inclusivity in Evolution Education
Facilitators:
Joelyn de Lima, EvoKE
Xana Sá-Pinto, Research Centre on Didactics and Technology in the Education of Trainers, Department of Education and Psychology, University of Aveiro, Portugal.
Duration: 4 hours
Description:
In this 4-hour workshop, participants will use evidence and theoretical frameworks from literature, to increase inclusivity in evolution education courses/activities through iterative cycles of design/redesign and peer feedback. Due to its perceived controversial nature, and potential conflicts with aspects of students’ identities, evolution education can seem alienating and exclusive. As evolution educators, both formal and informal, the choices we make have the potential to increase or decrease inclusivity and equitability in education.
By the end of the workshop, each participant will:
- Apply introspective tools to reflect on self-awareness as an integral component of inclusive teaching.
- Increase awareness of human tendencies and develop strategies to moderate their impact.
- Justify inclusivity in education using evidence that illustrates increases in student learning gains.
- Design/redesign evolutionary courses and activities using Universal Design for Learning to promote inclusivity in all aspects of the course/activity.
- Contribute to creating resources that promote inclusivity in evolution education which will then be shared with the larger community.
Improving evolution education in the UK: let’s build on what works
Facilitators:
Catalina Amihaiesi, Head of Programmes and Partnerships, Evolution Education Trust
Dr. Chris Lennard, CEO Evolution Education Trust
Duration: 4 hours
Description:
There are some fantastic examples of successful evolution education in the UK and Europe, but access to high-quality engaging educational interventions in the UK is patchy.
The Evolution Education Trust (EET) seeks to address this problem by building a practical framework to guide future collaboration, funding and support for evolution education in the UK. EET is a grant-making charitable trust based in Cambridge, UK, founded by Dr. Jonathan Milner, Founder of Abcam plc. The Trust has identified three goals for improving evolution education in the UK, based on key learnings from the current portfolio and a summary of empirical evidence available at bit.ly/EETsession. Participants will be encouraged to discuss in small groups and identify what works and where the gaps are for delivery of evidence-based age-appropriate interventions that could advance us towards meeting the three goals. A summary of collected recommendations will be shared post-event and the EET team would be happy to stay in touch with anyone interested in our future work.
Learning evolution for sustainable development
Facilitators:
Patrícia Pessoa, Research Centre on Didactics and Technology in the Education of Trainers (CIDTFF.UA) and University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD)
Xana Sá-Pinto, Research Centre on Didactics and Technology in the Education of Trainers, Department of Education and Psychology, University of Aveiro, Portugal.
Giulia Realdon, University of Camerino – Geology Section, UNICAMearth group
Duration: 4 hours
Description:
Understanding evolution is fundamental for making informed predictions about expected outcomes and future scenarios related to sustainability problems! During this 6 hours workshop participants will i) learn about the SSIs and Challenge-based learning approaches and how these can be used to promote education for sustainability, ii) discuss how knowledge on evolution can be used to inform decision-making processes related with sustainability problems, iii) work collaboratively in interdisciplinary and international groups to develop, implement and evaluate educational activities that explore sustainability problems from an evolutionary perspective.The workshop will result in draft proposals to be included in an e-book for educators.
Shifting mindsets towards evolution
Facilitator:
Rana Dajani, The Hashemite University
Duration: 2 hours
Description:
There are multiple challenges that prevent students and the public from embracing evolutionary theory. Most important is religion. This workshop aims to explore the various arguments used by opposers and how to counter them in the goal to shift mindsets toward evolution. The workshop is organized in the form of group case discussions from the experience of the attendees. Participants will be exposed to a diverse array of arguments against evolution and how to counter them. The outcome will be a tool kit of activities to be used by educators within their classes.
Beat Corona – a board game that teaches you how to fight human and animal coronaviruses
Facilitators:
Teresa Nogueira, INIAV – National Institute for Agrarian and Veterinary Research; Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c) & CHANGE – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Portugal
Margarida Duarte, INIAV – National Institute for Agrarian and Veterinary Research, Portugal
Liliana Vale Costa, University of Aveiro – DigiMedia, Portugal
Duration: 2 hours
Description:
More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed the real-time variability and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 as new variants emerged, superimposed and wiped out the previous ones. We have also undoubtedly been made aware of the risk of zoonotic transmission of diseases of viral origin to humans.
The aim of this workshop is to provide participants with the necessary information on animal and human coronaviruses, the diversity of coronavirus diseases, and concepts of immunity and transmission to enable them to play and make the most of the board game Beat Corona, making it more dynamic and challenging. This game is suitable for both formal and informal settings and is designed to educate, entertain and delight players of all ages.
Storytelling Science: Creating children’s literature to introduce evolutionary concepts to a young audience
Facilitators:
Tiffany Taylor, Milner Centre for Evolution, Department of Life Sciences, University of Bath, UK
Jonathan Tweet, USA
Duration: 4 hours
Description:
Storytelling is a powerful tool to communicate complex topics and maximise engagement with a broad spectrum of people. But what makes a good story? How do you communicate the difficult parts of evolution (like sex and death) to a young audience? How do you capture not only those with scientific curiosities, but also those that might not consider themselves “scientists”? In this workshop participants will pitch ideas for children’s books that address fundamental concepts in evolution. We will collectively work through these ideas: how will we communicate the more difficult concepts in an appropriate way? Who is the target audience (age-range, interests etc.)? How much detail is necessary to explain a concept? We will then decide which ideas are most promising, and importantly why, and develop these into storyboards and prototype storybooks. We will also touch on routes for funding and publishing scientific children’s literature projects.
The power of deep stories
Facilitators:
Dr. Neil Ingram, Senior Lecturer Science Education (emeritus), School of Education, University of Bristol, UK
Mrs Jane Still, Educational consultant and science teacher
Duration: 2 hours
Description:
This presentation will explore the potential of reframing the teaching of evolution to students aged 5-19, to reduce cognitive conflicts that may stimulate negative emotional reactions in some students, leading to resistance in learning. The approach will focus on the potential of “deep” stories that transmit accurate knowledge and shared values. The workshop will be multimodal and engage delegates in a variety of experiences and teaching episodes. Each workshop activity will be considered critically as a pedagogic discourse from a constructivist academic perspective.
Bridging science and public policies
Facilitators:
Fronika de Wit, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal; PlanAPP.
Alice Lourenço, PlanAPP
Duration: 2 hours
Description:
This workshop aims to contribute to bringing Science and Public Policies closer to the construction of evidence-informed policies. The workshop is in line with the European strategy of the Joint Research Centre (of the European Commission) and is part of a set of actions that are being developed in the Member states. During this short (2h) awareness-raising session, the role of Science in evidence-informed policies will be globally explored. To this end, a contextualization and simulation will be carried out, with participants being asked to reflect and discuss: 1) what roles Science has in the cycle of public policies; 2) evidence-informed policies; 3) the hierarchy of evidence. At the end, the lessons learned will be summarized.
Would you like to further develop your skills to make your science further used by policy makers?
Attend the extra Science and Policy development workshop on the day after the EvoKE 2023 meeting, on the 6th July. This extra 7 hours workshop will allow those interested in learning how to reach and work with policy makers and how to identify, select and provide them evidence to build science based policies. More information here.