Impacts of Formal Science Communication Training for Graduate Students & Postdoctoral Researchers

ComSciCon-Michigan (CSC-MI) is a local installment of the Communicating Science Conference (ComSciCon), an annual workshop led by graduate students to provide science communication training. Since starting in 2018, CSC-MI workshops have featured local science communication experts, hands-on and interactive sessions, and informal networking events that allowed attendees to strengthen communication skills. Here, we present an analysis of pre- and post-conference survey data collected from CSC-MI attendees from 2018-2020 to gauge the impact of our conference. Attendees were asked before and after the formal training events to self-report their confidence and ability to communicate their science to three different audiences: popular science outlets, the general public, and other scientists. We found a significant increase in attendees’ overall confidence after receiving training across all three audiences. In addition, we asked participants to write a 2-3 sentence summary about their research as part of the pre-/post-survey. We found that text readability scores decreased (i.e., text became more readable) though the number of difficult words used and the reading grade level of the research summaries remained constant. In conclusion, conference survey data showed that CSC-MI has had a measurable impact on the self-reported confidence and technical ability of early career researchers in the Midwest region to communicate their science more effectively.