NCSCE and KQED are seeking professors to integrate a new, exciting, and engaging element into their courses, as we prepare for the second semester for Do Now U. Do Now U aims to improve students’ science communication skills and digital literacy by going to where students already spend a lot of time—social media. With Do Now U, students connect with others to learn, share their thoughts, respond to each other’s ideas, craft multimedia arguments, and search for online publications to support their claims.
During the Fall 2015 semester, SENCER professors in the Do Now U pilot project engaged their students in creating and participating in a series of Do Now U posts, which were met with great success and enthusiasm. Five Do Now Us have already been posted, generating dialogues across the nation through hundreds of online comments, tweets, blog posts, and infographics.
Jim Speer, a Do Now U pilot professor at Indiana State University whose students authored a Do Now U post on the pros and cons of artificial turf, says, “I think that it was important for the students to see other universities participating in this topic. It made their own work more important because it tied into a national project where they could interact with KQED in San Francisco and other universities around the county. Many of my students have not travelled outside of Indiana and opportunities such as this give them the chance to interact with a larger community and be more engaged in the nation as a whole.”
Do Now U is a flexible project, which can be integrated into courses as you see fit. Posts are simple for students to create, can be done in or out of the classroom, utilize students’ existing talent with digital and social media, and teach them a new, broader mode of science communication.
If you are interested in having your students create Do Now U posts for KQED’s website, please contact Hailey Chenevert at hailey.chenevert@ncsce.net by Wednesday, December 9.
Previous Do Now U Posts
“Is Storing Health-care Data in the Cloud a Good Idea?” – #DoNowUCloud
“Is a Gluten-Free Diet Beneficial to Your Health?” – #DoNowUGluten
“Should We Install Fields of Artificial or Natural Turf?” – #DoNowUTurf
“The Fate of Polio: Eradication or Elimination?” – #DoNowUPolio
“How Would you Balance Wildlife Conservation with Economic Growth?” – #DoNowUGrouse
Photo credit: KQED