Many outreach activities are designed to be fun, flashy, or entertaining. These are great for engaging the audience, but may not do more than entertain. If we wish to educate as well as engage, we need to focus on our audience, and think about language, and our rhetorical approach. Understanding our audience allows us to plan how we approach the science, how much detail we use, and with what kind of language we discuss it, and helps us reach our audience where they are.<br/> <br/>We will use our own broad experiences with chemistry outreach as examples to illustrate more and less successful activity design, with the focus always on how language choices impacted the success of the project. We will share what we’ve learned working with elementary school students in our local school districts, middle school students in Boys and Girls Clubs, and local all-age communities both in our home state of Washington and in Szeged, Hungary. We will also share what we’ve learned about rhetorical approaches and language while working with undergraduate and graduate students on designing outreach activities, from short interactive ones, longer “labs”, and infographics. We will contrast the language from infographics and informational posters, such as those our students created for IYC2019, with the scientific posters our students create for conferences.<br/> <br/>When we consider language and who our audience is, it gives us the opportunity to intentionally design interactions that will be the most impactful for our audience, and the most likely to achieve our goals.

Outreach and language: Focus on accessibility and engagement

Where thousands of chemistry professionals meet to share ideas and advance scientific and technical knowledge. Spring 2023 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch at the end of March.

ACS Spring 2023

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.