EPIBOOST is committed to science communication and this is a challenging option considering the difficulties of explaining the concepts behind environmental epigenetics to non-specialized audiences. Education is key for a successful implementation of these concepts in the younger, towards a society better able to interpret the importance of epigenetic changes induced by environmental cues in human and wildlife health and wellbeing.
This is why UAVR has a team of experts in science education, particularly devoted to education using digital media. Cecília Guerra, Maria José Loureiro and David Oliveira have been working closely with team biologists (Joana Pereira and Guilherme Jeremias) towards the development of educational videos. These are tools that can serve as vehicles for the transfer of rigorous knowledge with high pedagogic-didactic (Education) in an appealing, catchy way (Communication and Arts).
The process of developing the first educational video, including the script and the story board were presented in the ICEM (International Council for Educational Media) conference 2023, held at Kuching, Malaysia, from the 10th to the 13th of September. Maria José Loureiro, who is also the president of the ICEM Board, delivered a platform presentation entitled “The EPIBOOST Project: how to promote science communication about Epigenetics with digital tools”.
The presentation collected a lot of interest and a raised a lot of interesting questions. People commented positively on our concerns towards transfering rigorous knowledge and concepts, de-constructing misleading ideas through science communication. The international scope of EPIBOOST was also commented very positively, and interestingly, the audience shared new ideas for future research involving epigenetics. People were asking themselves on whether epigenetics can have a role in learners, in their learning strategies, their cognition style, capacities, schoolar performance, etc. We can say that we believe that epigenetics has a significant role on all that, this being an excellent topic for future research joining science education and epigenetics!
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