Tuesday 8th March, 2011

Astrophysics Sub-department

Strategic Planning Meeting

Document prepared by: SO, PJM, AM

Astrophysics Outreach

Agenda items:

• The need for a strong, coordinated astrophysics outreach programme
• Summary of our current activities: open evenings, resource development
• Plans for the future: expansion, coherence, support, funding applications

1. Status Report

Activities:

The astrophysics sub-department is involved in a wide range of activities:

• Public and school telescope evenings (once and twice per month in term)

• Short talks by students and postdocs
• PWT demonstrations
• Activities for visitors inbetween: Height chart, Top Trumps

• Public talks within the department
• School talks

• By arrangement with Physics access
• Informally

• Talks for University taster days (targeted schools to broaden access)
• Drop-in event at the Oxfordshire Science Festival
• Galaxy Zoo

• The biggest outreach activity we have

• Galaxy Zoo workshops for schools
• Age of the universe “seminars” for central university activities
• A-level study days

Some are coordinated by Physics access officer Sian Owen in collaboration with a core group of students and postdocs (McQuillan, Wilkins, Marshall, Blake, Masters, Lewis, Hlozek, Zuntz, Lynn, Maguire, Macaulay, Gordon, Virdee, Houghton, Booth, Zagkouris, Brown, Bull, Baker, Fermani, Potter, Price). This is the “Outreach Group” - they are the sub-department members that respond to emails to the outreach@astro email list. Other activities happen informally, as (in particular) staff do outreach work independently.

Community:

Over 150 email address have been collected at public events (over the whole physics department) from people who are interested in being involved in further activities. This is our local community. It consists of people who are actively interested in science in general, and physics and astronomy in particular. These people are important, as they can play the role of science expert in their local networks. We currently serve this community by keeping them informed about various events organised by the outreach group, and in particular the telescope evenings.

Philip Wetton Telescope Public Evenings:

A number of telescope evenings were planned between November and April. These have proved very popular with the local community. The number of members of the public at each event was:

At the time of writing, 8th March, we already have 55 people signed up for April; we have scheduled an additional open evening to cope with demand. A core group of about 10 volunteers (the outreach group introduced above, with some additional student helpers) currently run these sessions, but more will be needed soon as we expand.

Activities at the telescope evenings include:

• A short talk by a student or postdoc
• A visit to the PWT observatory on the roof
• Tea and coffee, with informal interactions between scientists and the visitors based around discussion activities that include:

• The Universe Height Chart, Top Trumps card games
• Galaxy Zoo activities: Sorting Galaxies

The telescope evenings provide an excellent training ground for science communication, and bring the public into close but informal contact with scientists. They also introduce visitors to each other: they are social events. The PWT is a big attraction: visitors come primarily to see the sky through the telescope, and we take the opportunity to provide astronomical information and science education. For example, the talks introduce concepts such as how models work in science, how we know there is dark matter, how observing at great distances means looking back in time and so on. The activities teach things like the importance of understanding numbers relative to each other, how classification is important but still just a first step in science, etc.

Philip Wetton Telescope School Nights:

These follow approximately the same format as the public telescope evenings, with a shorter talk tailored to the age group of the class, and a rotation of two activities as well as the telescope demonstration (to replace the tea and coffee chat). In the period from December to April we will have hosted 14 school nights, with 9 different schools, 2 youth groups, a home school network and British Physics Olympiad competition winners. A total of 310 young people will have participated in groups of students aged from 8 to 18. Many of these schools return yearly and engage with other physics outreach activities delivered by the department. These teachers makeup our local education community: they not only provide portals into schools where we can support the teaching of science from 8 to 18, they can also help us develop better products by giving important feedback on our ideas.

Resource Development:

Primarily for the telescope evenings, but also for the Oxfordshire Science Festival drop-in event, the outreach group has developed a number of resources, including:

• The Universe Height Chart, on display in the DWB: visitors are invited to take a card with an object on it and place it on the chart, stimulating discussion and questions.
• An adaptation of this activity for use outside, lengthening the chart into a 26m long signposted walk; in good weather the waterproof object cards can be replaced by chalk drawings on the tarmac.
• Galaxy Zoo teaching plans: laminated pictures of galaxies are sorted by visitors and school children, finding that the classification schemes they come up with are very close to those used by astronomers, leading to discussions of progress in understanding how galaxies work starting from observations of how they look.
• Astrophysics Top Trumps card games: a fun and efficient way of familiarising people with the contents of the Universe, and their properties. This game also teaches numeracy: choice of units is key, as are relative numbers, scientific notation is sometimes unavoidable.
• Standard talks for outreach: developed independently by several members on a variety of topics, and pooled for re-presentation by others

At present these are for our own use in the activities listed above, but wider distribution could be considered. Funding for these resources comes from a small department outreach grant, and personal research funds.

2. Strategy, Recommendations

The Astrophysics group should commit to a strong, coordinated outreach programme.

Strong:

• Communicating science is more important than ever before: there is a need for scientists work harder to counter public mistrust of science, and help people understand complex and growing problems like climate change, by encouraging rationality, critical thinking and numeracy.
• Communication is a skill needed by all researchers. Outreach work is important training, both for research (paper-writing, talk-giving) and for jobs outside academia.

Coordinated:

Many academics do excellent work in schools which is not recorded centrally. It is important to keep track of all activities, in order for sub-department members to:

• Share activities and resources
• Develop and train others
• Receive help liaising with schools
• Ensure we work coherently with targeted (e.g. state) schools

and also to meet the requirements of various funding-linked performance exercies (REF etc).

Regular meetings of an outreach committee, with representation from students, postdocs, staff, the Galaxy Zoo project and the physics access office, are proposed to oversee the coordination of the Oxford Astrophysics outreach programme as it develops. Activities of this committee would include:

• Putting mechanisms in place for connecting the active outreach participants to each other and to the committee
• Organising the development and maintenance of the public pages of the subdepartment website
• Keeping records (including statistics and feedback) of the various outreach projects goals and performance
• Encouraging, supporting and writing applications for funding from STFC, the RS, etc.
• Forging links with other groups (Green Templeton college, other physics subdepartments, local amateur astronomy groups etc)

PFR and PJM to set up this committee after discussion with SO.

3. Possible Future Directions

Partnerships:

• Development of links with Green Templeton College, including public lectures and  Transit of Venus activities June 2012. Charlie Barclay is one link here, also Estelle Bayet; others may be put in place (“astronomer in residence”?)
• Local affiliated technology companies (suggestion by AT)

Community:

• Newsletter/blog for interested locals to keep in touch
• Expansion of the telescope evenings to two per month to keep numbers in hand
• Develop further links with local schools (targeted, strategic)

Resource Development:

• Resources/teaching pack for GCSE astronomy
• Laptops for Galaxy Zoo school activities?
• Portable demonstration equipment for school workshops – e.g. telescopes and radio telescopes, mobile planetarium?
• Space within the department for equipment: no cupboard at present.

Training:

• Graduate science communication course - this could be given by several astro staff members, with some outside support, and could cover how to: give talks, both to the public and to research audiences, write press releases and news articles, write papers, how to interact with the media, with the public, with children and so on. At present Charlie Barclay does a single session in the sub-department on how to give an astronomy talk to kids, where attendance is voluntary.

Website:

Development of a clear, easily-accessible, coherent public website is very important.

• Visitors must sign up for telescope evenings so we can count them in, and so they need to be able to reach us easily. This means we need a public activities section that is much more accessible from then front page.

• The website as a community resource. Forums for local astronomy discussion, online automated sign-up forms, ask-an-astronomer etc

• The website as an educational resource, making it easy for children who have visited us learn more about astronomy, based on what they have during their visits.

• Sub-departmental pages including summaries of research for outreach purposes. This will double as advertising for prospective students, postdocs and staff, but is also an opportunity for public education.
• Galaxy Zoo linked more obviously: there is currently no link to Galaxy Zoo from the Oxford Astrophysics page.
• Resources page for schools, to distribute materials and follow up visits by astronomers.