language connectED recently had the opportunity to travel to UNC Charlotte to provide a training workshop on effective story telling techniques for a collective of postdocs from five different universities. This was a day filled with networking and on-the-spot practice to help support biomedical researchers hone their message and craft their research stories to make them memorable and engaging for a wide range of audiences.
One thing we stress is all of our workshops is that communication takes focus and practice. Just like postdocs set research goals, we encourage them to also engage seriously in setting goals for effective communication, which is Core Competency #3 of the National Postdoctoral Association. Effective communication to broad audiences is essential for scientific and research communication and a must for professional success. We engage postdocs on understanding the key features of an IDP (Individual Development Plan) and use it to not only set research goals, but also specific and measurable goals around communication.
It’s essential to plan for effective communication- what do you want to say? who is the audience? what do you want the audience to remember? how are you going to frame your story? what analogy or other techniques will you use to make your complex research accessible to broad audiences?
Then you must practice…and repeat. Building fluency takes repetition.
Participants and University of North Carolina Charlotte crafting their Storytelling Frameworks- a must in preparing to communicate research effectively!
Participants practicing their research stories with a variety of listeners, working to ‘test their linguistic hypothesis’ to how their message is received by various listeners.