Difference between revisions of "Team:British Columbia/Human Practices"

Revision as of 19:29, 17 October 2018

This year, the theme of our Human Practices endeavors was Altering public perception of genetic engineering. In addition to acquiring input from established academics and leaders in industry regarding the laboratory component of the project, we decided to write an investigative journalism piece on the attitudes people have towards science, and host workshops for high school students by partnering with Geering Up, a local non-profit organization. To best convey what we gained from our interviews, we adapted and used the AREA framework as described by the University of Exeter:

ANTICIPATE: What we hoped to gain from the interview

REFLECT: How information from the interview can be applied to our project

ENGAGE: Overview of what was discussed during the interview

ACT: Our next steps that were influenced by the interview

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JAMES VOGL

the editor of the science section of the Ubyssey. B.A. student, interests in political science and economics.

A: When going into the interview the UBC iGEM team anticipated that we would receive information about how we approach making our own journalism piece for our iGEM project and any tips and tricks from a science journalist who has varying experiences in curating a piece through interviews, e-mails, and parsing through appropriate research articles. We were also wanting him to provide us information about how to interview other individuals in the science field and how we would accurately and precisely receive the information we need through an interview and efficiently conduct several when writing our journal piece.
R: Interview James was extremely insightful as he provided several pieces of advice on creating an article. This interview allowed us to pause and understand where the navigation of our journal article was going to. As he emphasized public interest, our main reflection from this interview was the aspect of enticing the public in terms of our hook and our title. This interview served as a fundamental step in producing a journal article about our iGEM project.
E: Throughout our interview we were given tips to alter our approach of journalism. Firstly, he introduced a new method of writing which is called “Front Loading”. Front Loading is using exciting and important information in the introduction of the article and allowing information that does not directly pertain to the article at the conclusion. Essentially he described it as writing an article with the hope that readers read until the end, but the expectation that readers will not. Therefore, we were amazed to learn that articles incorporate marketing tactics to serve the information to the appropriate readers. Additionally, James informed us about how to appropriately approach contacting individuals within a scientific field in hopes of writing an article about them. He mentioned several probing questions if the conversation is stagnant and how to direct it if the conversation is going on a tangent. This was extremely informative to us because before this interview, when conducting interviews there were patches in the interview that were uncomfortable and/or hard to overcome. Thus, the few pointers he provided us was definitely appreciated.
A: We will use the advice James Vogl provided us and use that when constructing our journalism piece. Additionally, we are able to transfer this knowledge to the next year iGEM teams if they want to curate a an article outlining their project. Finally, when writing our wiki this serves as a great stepping stone as we are able to apply certain writing tips James shared with us to the wiki page.

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