Evaluation

Reading through the draft copy for this latest debate kit made me smile.  It was very good.  Sure, I’m a bit of an Olympics geek and general armchair sportsman, but I felt it provided great angles to debate a very contentious, yet easy to grasp, scientific issue – Drugs in Sport. It seems as though I’m not the only one who likes the sound of it. This is a quick update on how we are distributing the 2,000 kits that we have printed. Previous recipients of debate kits The first 4 debate kits enabled us to build a decent list of teachers who wanted them. Our evaluation showed that the kits were well used, but the last one to get posted out was in June 2010 so we thought it appropriate to ask those teachers to opt in to get the next one. We emailed the 1,543 people on that … Continue reading →

The I’m a Scientist Debate Kits project is now over (for the moment). Here’s a summary of the evaluation findings, or you can download the full report at the bottom. Summary I’m a Scientist Debate Kits is a project to help get more debate and discussion in the UK’s science classrooms. It was a Gallomanor project funded by the Wellcome Trust Over the last 18 months we have produced and distributed four kits, on different biomedical topics. Altogether roughly 4,500 printed copies, on three biomedical topics, have been printed and distributed, plus a further 4,000 copies downloaded. They have proved extremely popular with teachers, apparently meeting a teaching need for high-quality, simple-to-use resources to stimulate debate and discussion in the science classroom. Teachers judged them to be very effective. The kits got students seeing different sides to an argument, expressing their opinions and backing them up with facts, and developing … Continue reading →