On a school morning last September, small groups of 5th-graders crowded around tools connected to scientific research—a microscope, a robotic camera, and even a snake named Morgan Freeman—clipboards and pencils in hand. They were at the Melrose branch of Roanoke (Va.) Public Libraries (RPL), judging graduate students from Virginia Tech (VT) in Blacksburg on their research.
The event was RPL’s second Flip the Fair, introduced in 2022 to help graduate students develop skills to effectively communicate their research while engaging local elementary students with STEM topics and the library. It’s an example of how libraries are seeking innovative ways to share science and research with new audiences.
“We wanted to give [graduate students] an opportunity to discuss their work with the public and with an especially tough audience of children,” says Amanda Hensley, a PhD student in VT’s Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health program and a fellow in VT’s Interfaces of Global Change (IGC) program, who worked with RPL on the event.
At the September 2023 event, nearly 200 students attended and selected their favorite research in categories like Curious Questioner, Prettiest Poster, Radical Results, Master of Methods, and Overall Best Communicator from about 25 presentations. The entrants represented a variety of scientific fields, with specific topics like the effects of sugar on human biology and why vampire bats are so important.
Flipping the switch
The idea for Flip the Fair originally came from IGC, an interdisciplinary graduate program designed to foster collaboration among scholars in addressing social, economic, and environmental change. Its graduate students were looking for a capstone project that incorporated science communication.
“Our [library’s] vision statement is ‘Engage, educate, and empower,’” says Amber Lowery, RPL assistant director. “This program brought all three of those goals together.”
The flipped fair looks a lot like most school science fairs, down to the trifold posters students use to display their findings. Presenters attended a workshop from VT’s Center for Communicating Science and Office of Diversity and Inclusion about how to create their posters and effectively describe their research for elementary school students.
At the fair, RPL and VT volunteers walked grade-schoolers around in teams so they could see the posters and talk to presenters. The groups then had the opportunity to discuss what they had seen and select their favorites.
RPL’s first Flip the Fair took place during the library’s regular hours and was open to the public. It attracted nearly 50 students, primarily from 3rd to 5th grade.
The second edition expanded: The branch closed for several hours and partnered with three local schools to bring 5th-grade classes for an hour each as a field trip. Future fairs will likely be modeled on this format, says Lowery.
Grad students are trained to present in a certain manner, but this is an opportunity for them to think a little outside of the box.—Charity Slobod, professional development and student experience manager in Graduate Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia
“In my 19 years, this is one of the most impactful programs we’ve done,” Lowery says. Some RPL branches are in an underserved area, she says, and frequently “kids might not see themselves going on to higher education and don’t consider the field of science as an option for them.”
Lowery adds, “To see grad students who look like them and are from this area and who are young and passionate about their work just blew their minds.”
Teachers also noticed the event’s impression on students. “I heard the same thing over and over from teachers: They could not believe how engaged their children were,” Hensley says.
Start the timer
Other universities have also collaborated with libraries to present research to the public. Three Minute Thesis (3MT) is an annual competition that challenges doctoral students to give engaging presentations of their research for a general audience in no more than three minutes. University of Queensland in Australia created 3MT in 2008, and it began spreading internationally in 2011. More than 900 universities worldwide have held 3MT competitions.
Participating in 3MT can help students develop skills to talk about their research in a variety of circumstances, says Charity Slobod, professional development and student experience manager in Graduate Studies at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, British Columbia: “Students can take some of the transferable skills and use them to organize a quick little conference panel, a five-minute flash talk, or scholarship and grant applications.”
The skills are also valuable for speaking with nonexperts. “Open access publishing is really important, but open is not necessarily useful to all,” says SFU Research Commons Librarian Julie Jones, because the language of peer-reviewed research is not intended to be accessible to the average reader.
SFU Graduate Studies has organized the school’s 3MT competition for nearly a decade. Competitions typically attract audiences of 60–70 faculty and staff members, students, and alumni in person, plus more than 100 watching livestreams and up to 800 views of the recording. This year, the department started cofacilitating workshops with SFU Library’s Research Commons to help students prepare.
“The type of work that students put in to participate in 3MT, and the skills they develop, are quite aligned with the library’s goals around knowledge mobilization and supporting researchers in different ways of communicating research,” Jones says.
The Research Commons offers two 90-minute workshops to help students illuminate what matters in their research and present effectively for nonexperts. The first focuses on the presentation’s initial 30 seconds, encouraging students to start with a surprising statistic, elements of suspense, or humor. The second workshop helps students break their research down into a logical flow and provides guidance on effective presentation delivery.
“Grad students are trained to present in a certain manner, but this is an opportunity for them to think a little outside of the box as they talk up their research,” Slobod says.
The library offered both workshops for the first time in 2024, attracting about 10 of the approximately 50 people participating in 3MT.
In addition to improving communication skills, winners of preliminary heats selected by judging panels and audience votes earn cash prizes and advance to the university-wide competition and potentially regional and national competitions. Slobod says participants can even engage with their work in a new way.
“I’ve had students say that doing a 3MT has made them fall in love with their research again,” Slobod says, “because they see the larger impact and how it connects on a much wider scope than what they’re accustomed to.”
