Developing outreach and education capability within the MacDiarmid Institute - Annual Report 2024

1 July, 2025

Our Outreach and Education portfolio has a long-term aim to enable more of our people to be involved in public engagement with our science. In 2024 we have been actively working to develop skills and confidence in outreach within the Institute. At the annual symposium, Deputy Director Outreach and Education Associate Professor Anna Garden gave a talk on 'best practice' of outreach, highlighting the need for relevance (regional, cultural), slowly developing relationships and the importance of having fun rather than teaching. Examples were drawn from outreach activities within the Institute and its partners from the last few years.

Associate Professor Anna Garden

Two hands-on outreach workshops have been delivered through the Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka University of Otago (UoO) MacDiarmid Emerging Scientists Association (MESA) group. The first was run by Institute Affiliate Dr Dave Warren and Anna Garden.

Self-scored rating of knowledge on the topic of hydrogen fuel before and after the first workshop

We took this chance to conduct a numerical evaluation of the effectiveness of this workshop in increasing the confidence of our early career researchers and the likelihood of their participation in outreach activities in the next few months. Pre- and post-workshop surveys (N=6) showed that confidence increased by 13% and likelihood of participation by 17% as a result of this activity.

The second outreach workshop was run as part of our Career and Relevant-to-Industry Skills Programme (CRISP) in November (again run by Anna Garden, with assistance from Marijn Kouwenhoven). A strong focus of the workshop was on emphasising fun and exploration, rather than teaching and facts. Students and early career researchers were asked to come up with ways of demonstrating scientific principles without key words and given specific age groups/demographics to demonstrate activities to. A particular highlight was attendees being able to act as the given audience.