Transferable and complementary skills I:

Public Engagement, Outreach and Critical Thinking

Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Campus

The Transferable Skills and Public Engagement Training at QMUL 9-13 May 2016 involved experts from:

• The QMUL team on Communication, Conversation and Engaging with Partnership;

• The Educational Officer from RAF Hendon on Public engagement with the wider audience;

• Graham Davis, Critical Thinking;

• Bryony Frost, Public Engagement QMUL, Evaluation, Reflection and Planning

During the training session organised by the QMUL experts the ESRs presented their own work in the ‘Dragon’s Den’ pitch session. Following a training workshop on public engagement, all ESRs jointly developed material for their outreach activities such as posters, presentations and interactive demonstations.

Training Feedback

This training provided the ESRs with useful information about public engagement and critical thinking. Moreover, in this training, the ESRs were also taught how to plan a public engagement event and how to evaluate the input from this in order tocomplete it. Generally, it was a very interesting training which guided the ESRs to plan their public engagement event within the IODAproject.

Learning how to plan a public engagement event is very useful, because this is a very efficient way to inform people for a topic, such as a research, and make it easy for everyone to understand.

Athanasios