Virtual modality

Months out from Australian National Science Week 2020, it became clear that our nine-day celebration of Stem was going to look quite different. In Sydney, we swapped hopping between physical events across the city for ‘Zooming’ into events across the country.

Perhaps naively, we thought that National Science Week 2021 would return to a more familiar format. But as cases of the Delta variant began to rise, the pivot to online began in earnest.

Logged on

Two postgraduate students in our research team, the Science Communication, Outreach, Participation and Education (SCOPE) Group at the University of Sydney, led an evaluation of National Science Week in 2020, with a particular focus on the online experience for both audience and presenters. Olivia McRae and Ellie Downing found, to my surprise, that for over 80% of audience respondents the online format had positively influenced their decision to attend.