Endpoint

How the other side learn

By 2014-01-07T00:00:00

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Kristy Turner flies the flag for outreach and encourages academics to try their hand at ‘experiential learning’ in the classroom

Widening participation targets are increasing while outreach budgets are stagnating; in the current economic climate aren’t we all searching for the holy grail of outreach?

During my year as the Royal Society of Chemistry school teacher fellow at the University of Manchester, I came up with the idea that if we could get academics to go into schools or colleges to teach just one A-level lesson then we would go some way to bridging the gap between school and university chemistry. After all, I can talk until I am blue in the face about the student experience at A-level, how their skills have changed over the last decade or so, but there is nothing like actually experiencing it. My first (and for a long time, only!) volunteer was Stephen Yeates, professor of polymer chemistry and head of our physical chemistry section. Soon we had a date, a partner college in Winstanley College and a topic, introduction to kinetics.

Kristy Turner describes her outreach experience.

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