From Science to Society

Bridge Science to Society in Healthcare! Master Open Science, stakeholder engagement, impactful research, and innovation for a strong start on your career.

Think for a moment:
What would the purpose of science be, without any societal impact?
What does societal impact even mean?

This course will dive into societal impact and help you facilitate it in research by introducing three key concepts: Open Science, science communication, and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). Through inspirational lectures and interactive workshops, we will discuss important characteristics that contribute to the ‘successes’ of research, and practices that bring Science closer to Society. In parallel, at the start of the minor, you will choose a concerning health-related societal issue to tackle with your peers by incorporating your skills.

The purpose of this minor is to help you approach complex problems, by engaging various stakeholders and enabling you to see and integrate multiple perspectives. Additionally, you will develop critical thinking skills for designing and conducting research, by ensuring diversity, inclusivity, and transparency in your research studies. Moreover, you will work on training your soft skills to engage the public and effectively communicate your findings with society.

Although this sounds brilliant, it also comes with challenges. How do you bring research outside of the papers and make it accessible to a wider audience thereby engaging society? How do you optimally utilize your talents and stakeholders’ strengths?

In this course, we will discuss these questions together by aligning your scientific ideas and ambitions with the current societal needs. By the end of the minor, you will be able to use the gained knowledge to boost your research skills and get a strong start on your career.

After completing this minor, students will be able to apply the principles of Open Science, science communication, and RRI to boost societal impact of (their) scientific findings. Students will more specifically be able to:

• Understand the concepts of Open Science and RRI;
• Understand the changing dynamics in the academic system;
• Describe key issues that hamper reproducibility of research;
• Identify and prevent questionable research practices;
• Value the opportunities for open-access publishing as well as having an open research process;
• Differentiate between different communication channels such as scientific literature, social and traditional media, and know when to use what;
• Demonstrate differences between scientific and societal impact, and apply techniques to achieve societal impact;
• Translate scientific findings in an easy-to-understand language (e.g., social media, popular texts, and videos);
• Reflect on their own skills and competencies as a science communicator;
• Understand the importance and role of engaging with different stakeholders;
• Understand the importance of public engagement in research.

This minor has a broadening character and will be open for students from different faculties and universities to boost mutual learning and transdisciplinarity. The Minor is organized by the Epidemiology department at Erasmus Medical Center (EMC), thus prior knowledge in healthcare may be beneficial for understanding certain topics.

This minor is focused on competence education, coaching, self-study, and group work. It will generally follow the experiential educational principles of Project-based Problem Learning (PPL).

Teaching methods
In the ‘plenary’ sessions all students will be educated to attain the learning objectives, using lectures, interactive working groups, and flipping the classroom techniques. These methods are supplemented by Project-based learning, an experiential learning technique to acquire skills during the project in which students work together within small groups of 4-5 students. This experiential learning technique ensures that students acquire competencies such as collaboration, leadership, and communication, and can directly apply their gained skills.

Teaching materials
Lectures and workshops will be provided supported by educational material that will be shared on Canvas. Projects can be done transdisciplinary, and can for example range from:

• a critical view of science
• transitional healthcare systems (big data)
• health inequity and accessibility barriers in healthcare
• a list with recommendations for policymakers to value ‘scientific success’ (philosophy)

For a project, students can also serve as consultants for established researchers to help them generate more societal impact (transdisciplinarity).

Method of examination
Individually, students will be assessed based on their demonstrated learning progress in their portfolio including their project reports and individual reflection assignments. On a group level, students are graded based on their team collaboration and project output which also includes a presentation of the achieved work and potentially identified facilitators or barriers/challenges that still lie ahead. All students will receive a weighted grade based on their progress and group achievements.

Composition final grade
Individual assignments (reflection journal, participation in the interactive workshops and working groups): pass / no pass.

Joint project grade, based on the working document (33%), end product (33%), and the final presentation (33%). The final grade is based on pass / no pass (1%) for your involvement and attendance in the minor on the individual level and your active participation and contribution to the group assignment. They will be measured with class attendance and peer evaluation for the group end product and presentation.