The Narrative Culture and Community Research Centre is delighted to announce that Dr Lyle Skains will deliver the next talk in our Faculty Research Centre Seminar Series, details as follows:
3pm, Wednesday 30 June 2021
Communicating STEM through Narrative
Dr Lyle Skains, Bournemouth University
Join Zoom Meeting: https://bournemouth-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/82960324710?pwd=Z05yZmpoM0V3SXBPRzdMLzVFR0RIZz09
We spend approximately 3% of our lives in formal education, but about 30% engaging in media, whether books, games, film/TV, or online. Many, many people perceive the world not through the didactic lens of textbooks and teachers, but through characters and interactions in the narratives they engage with on a daily basis. Further, narrative is a fundamental aspect of human communication; yet far too often science and health communication has been approached with a “bare-bones” fact-giving strategy. So how can we use narratives to better inform the public about science and health topics? This talk looks at an approach from practice-based research projects in using interactive digital narratives for science and health education, and how specific narratives on STEM topics can be crafted for specific audiences in order to educate and inform by first entertaining and engaging.
Lyle Skains researches interactive digital narratives for health and science communication, conducting practice-based research into writing, reading/playing, and publishing digital and transmedia narratives. Her recent digital fiction includes No World 4 Tomorrow for the You & CO2 project, and Only, Always, Never for the Infectious Storytelling project; both works were designed to effect social change. Her latest book, Using Interactive Digital Narrative for Health and Science Education, details these projects’ pilots, as well as offering insights into the creation of these works, and working in widely interdisciplinary teams. Her digital fiction can be found at lyleskains.com; articles in Convergence, Digital Creativity, and Computers and Composition; and monograph on Digital Authorship (Cambridge UP). She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Health and Science Communication at Bournemouth University.