The Pandemic Prevention Debate Kit was funded by The Royal Institution, UK Research and Innovation, and the Reckitt Global Hygiene Institute.

The Kit asks the question: Were all treated fairly?

The Kit was disributed from January 2022, and evaluated in July 2023. Continue reading →

The Climate Warming (Ban Flying) Debate Kit was funded by the Royal Institution, IBM, Lloyd’s Register Foundation, and UK Research and Innovation. It was produced alongside the CHRISTMAS LECTURES Zone, in partnership with the 2020 RI CHRISTMAS LECTURES series: Planet Earth: A User’s Guide.

The Climate Warming Debate Kit asks the question: Should flying be banned for ten years?

The Kit was distributed from March 2021, and evaluated during December 2021 and January 2022.

Summary:

• We estimate that at least 221 Debate Kits have been used with students.
• Feedback from teachers who have used the Kit is highly positive. Teachers value the ways in which the Kit links to the curriculum, provides varied perspectives around the issue, and encourages students’ lateral thinking.
• Every teacher responding to the feedback survey, reported that they intend to use the Debate Kit again.
• The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant and ongoing impacts on schools and teaching. Teacher feedback across our projects indicates a need to focus on the core curriculum due to lost time from school closures, students isolating, and navigating changing restrictions. This is reflected in feedback we have received which indicates that many teachers have not yet had time to make use of the Kit.
• 75% of teachers who told us they haven’t yet used the Kit report that they intend to use it in the future.

Read the full report [PDF] ❯ Continue reading →

The Food Hygiene Debate Kit was funded by e-Bug and Safe Consume.

The Kit asks the question: Is it safer to eat at home or out at a restaurant?

The Kit was distributed from June 2020, and evaluated during December 2021 and January 2022.

Summary:

• We estimate that at least 308 Debate Kits have been used with students.
• Feedback from teachers who have used the Kit is consistently positive. Teachers value the ability of the Kit to encourage critical thinking and appreciation of others’ opinions.
• 94% of teachers responding to the feedback survey, reported that they intend to use the Debate Kit again.
• The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant and ongoing impacts on schools and teaching. Teacher feedback across our projects indicates a need to focus on the core curriculum due to lost time from school closures, students isolating, and navigating changing restrictions. This is reflected in feedback we have received which indicates that many teachers have not yet had time to make use of the Kit.
• 57% of teachers who told us they haven’t yet used the Kit report that they intend to use it in the future.

Read the full report [PDF] ❯ Continue reading →

The Self-Driving Cars Debate Kit was funded by the Institute of Physics, the Royal Institution, and Lloyd’s Register Foundation. It was produced alongside the CHRISTMAS LECTURES Zone, in partnership with the 2019 RI CHRISTMAS LECTURES series: Secrets and lies?

The Self-Driving Cars Debate Kit asks the question: Should our town centre be for self-driving cars only?

Through our evaluation we have learnt:

• We estimate that at least 515 Debate Kits have been used with students.
• Teachers valued the Debate Kit. Teachers report that the Kit has encouraged debate and respect for each other’s opinions. Teachers value the way in which the Kit “puts STEM learning in a real-life context”.
• Kits have been used across a range of age groups from KS2 to KS5, and with adult learners.
• Reception to competitions were mixed. 21 entries were received for the KS2/3 competition to design a road sign, however no entries were received for the KS4/5 competition to report on the debate.

Read the full report [PDF] ❯ Continue reading →

The Unisex Toilets Debate Kit asks the question: Should schools make all their toilets unisex?

The Debate Kit was funded by the Royal Institution and Lloyd’s Register Foundation. It was produced alongside the CHRISTMAS LECTURES Zone, in partnership with the 2018 RI CHRISTMAS LECTURES series: Who am I?. Continue reading →

Slightly. A recent request for help resulted in a surprisingly large number of girls schools responding. We wondered if participating schools were biased along single sex education lines. A quick analysis gave us the following percentages of UK schools taking part: 20.4% of secondary schools 19.9% of mixed schools 27.7% of Girls Schools 19.0% of Boys Schools So we have a slight bias towards girls schools, but as they constitute only 7% of secondary schools, we can live with that bias. And here’s the Venn diagram that illustrates the figures, and illustrates how dreadful venn diagram generators are.

According to the I’m a Scientist poll in the £50 Note Zone, the scientist who should appear on the new £50 Note is:

Stephen Hawking

Championed by Lydia James and Ryan Cutter, Stephen Hawking won the most votes in our poll; students and members of the public believe he should be the scientist featured on the new £50 Note. Continue reading →

The Privacy Debate Kit asks the question: Should mobile phones always be listening?

The Privacy Debate Kit was funded by the Royal Institution and Lloyd’s Register Foundation. It was produced alongside the CHRISTMAS LECTURES Zone, in partnership with the 2017 RI CHRISTMAS LECTURES series: The language of life.

2,000 Kits were produced, and distributed from January 2018. As of September 2018, all but a handful of Kits have been distributed. Continue reading →

The Vaccinations Debate Kit discusses whether children should be required to have all their vaccinations before they can go to school.

This debate kit was funded by e-Bug (a project operated by Public Health England) and Science Foundation Ireland. Gallomanor collaborated with E-Bug to research the kit, and asked for advice from teachers to ensure its educational suitability.

3,000 kits were printed in March 2015: 1,000 were distributed by e-Bug and 2,000 by Gallomanor. We have just finished our evaluation on these kits. And this is what we’ve learnt:

Continue reading →

The Antibiotic Resistance Debate Kit discusses whether the NHS should tell GPs to give back-up prescriptions instead of immediate antibiotics wherever possible.

The kit was funded by e-Bug (a project operated by Public Health England) and Science Foundation Ireland. Its main distribution took part between October 2014 and January 2015, and we have evaluated it between September and November 2015. After the evaluation, we’ve learnt: Continue reading →

In March 2014 we started running zones for primary students only, increasing the number of primary school students who take part in I’m a Scientist. And we wanted to know more about how the event affects them.

This time, we drifted away from our usual online environment and sent printed surveys to teachers taking part in the Colour Zone and the Thulium Zone, the two primary-only zones we ran in June 2015.

We asked students which 3 words they would use to describe a scientist, before and after taking part. We got responses from over 300 students from 9 different schools. The students used more that 230 different words to describe scientists. They used 188 different words before taking part and 127 after, maybe indicating that they are clearer about what a scientist is after taking part. Awesome, cooperative, inquisitive, life-saving… are just some examples of the words they used Continue reading →

The Big Data Debate Kit was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland.

The kit discusses whether we should sequence the genomes of one million people, to find out more about living longer and healthier lives.

After evaluating it we found out that:

Continue reading →

It’s been a year since we launched our Electricity Distribution Debate Kit. We emailed all the 810 teachers who requested it, and followed them up with reminder emails and letters to collect feedback. We then analysed it and this is what we’ve found out:

• Hard copies of the kit were sent to 810 teachers who requested them,  687 were sent to STEM Contract Holders, and the rest were distributed among different teacher networks. The kit was also downloaded by 242 different users.
• We estimate that the kit was used by 29% of the teachers who requested it.
• Every teacher who filled in the feedback survey found the kit to be an “excellent” or “pretty good” educational resource.
• 97% of teachers feel their students know more about Electricity Distribution after using the kit.
• We measured how the students reflected on the issues surrounding electricity distribution and actually changed their minds throughout the debate.

You can read the full evaluation report here (PDF). Continue reading →

I was asked recently what the gender split was for students taking part in I’m a Scientist. I replied that we’d never looked on the assumption that since teachers took their students online it would reflect the school population. I’m never one to turn down the chance to crunch some numbers so I took a look. And was surprised. At registration we ask if the person registering is a Boy, Girl or A group of students (where more than one pupil is sharing a log-in). We have data going back to June 2012 and nearly 15,000 respondents to the question. Surprisingly it wasn’t a straight 50:50 split. So I then decided to look at it by year group. What we saw was that year 9 & 10 were significantly skewed towards girls. And that bias continued through to 6th form. Is that common for science outreach events?