Public Engagement

Biologists and fishers have had a notoriously difficult relationship and positive dialogue is needed to find common ground.

Our project aimed to generate such communication, starting with a series of public lectures on “How smart are fish and why does this matter to fishers?” and culminating in an interactive e-learning presentation. Lectures were based on an extensive literature review, drawing on our expertise in fish behaviour and conservation, key research themes in MVLS.

The interactive e-learning presentation expanded on this material, using videos and interviews to make it attractive and accessible. We successfully promoted communication between biologists and fishers while publicising research from the College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences.

The Establishing positive communication with fishers group consisting of Maria Martina Quaggiotto IBAHCM, Prof Felicity A Huntingford IBAHCM, Jenny Crow MVLS Digital Education and Nigel Hutchins Learning Enhancement & Academic Development Service were Highly Commended in the MVLS Engagement Award 2018 rewarding good public engagement practice with MVLS research.

The series of lectures “How smart are fish and why does this matter to fishers?” took place at the University of Stirling, the Zoological Society in London and the Trinity College in Dublin (Ireland) with the support of the Buckland Foundation. The stage was shared between research scientists and high-profile anglers. Andy Walker, Charles Jardine and Ken Whelan shared their views on whether or not fish are smart according to his lifelong fishing experience.

The development of the interactive e-learning presentation “How smart are fish?” was sponsored by the Fisheries Society of the British Isles (FSBI), supported by professional service staff of the University of Glasgow and published on the University of Glasgow website.

To prepare the interactive e-learning presentation, Prof Felicity Huntingford and Dr Martina Quaggiotto (IBAHCM, UoG) joined forces with Mr Nigel Hutchins (Learning Enhancement & Academic Development Service, UoG) and Miss Jenny Crow (Digital Education, UoG).

This partnerships were crucial for the high quality realization of the interactive e-learning presentation. Mr Hutchins provided extensive technical support in filming interviews and editing the many video sequences included to make the presentation interesting and attractive. Miss Crow provided generous access to, training in and assistance with the software Articulate Storyline, as well as expert advice on general principles of effective e-learning.

When Prof Huntingford was nominated Buckland Professor of Fisheries 2016, she first gave a presentation called “How smart fish are and why it matters to fishers” at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan (South Korea) in 2016. In this occasion, scientists (who know that fish can be smart) express the urge to change the common view that fish are unintelligent animals. From then, the long term project on fish smartness started to develop having Prof Huntingford as its initiator in terms of general concept and content of lectures. The project aimed to generate communication promoting knowledge exchange between fish behavioural biologists, fishers and the public audience.

The content of the lectures and interactive e-learning presentation was based on an extensive and creative literature review, drawing on Prof Huntingford and Dr Quaggiotto’s joint expertise in fish behaviour and conservation, key research themes in MVLS. The project had clear shared interests with many IBAHCM scientists: fish behaviour and ecophysiology related to fisheries induced evolution and sociality explored by Shaun Killen and Neil Metcalfe, aquaculture and fish cognition investigated by Martin Llewellyn, fish behaviour within marine protected areas examined by David Bailey.

We successfully initiated a conversation between fishers and scientists by including fishers’ knowledge and views in both the public lectures and interactive e-learning presentation.

We learned how to evaluate the impact of the project through questionnaires. We also gained enhanced skills in writing for a general audience, in media production and in the use of new e-learning software such as Articulate Storyline.

We enhanced the public understanding of complex fish behaviour. 1) Our post-lecture questionnaires showed that 100% of the audience had enhanced their knowledge of fish: 93% reported changed perceptions and 86% reported changed attitudes toward fish conservation and management. 2) Following online publication on the GU website the interactive e-learning presentation was publicised on the FSBI and Buckland Foundation websites reaching thousands of people. Its sharing through social media counted ca 18k impressions in Twitter and ~7k in Facebook. 3) We received several emails of appreciation for our online resource, some of which mentioned potential future collaborations. 4) An interview was published by the diving magazine Scubaverse.

One of the available tools to be used for evaluating the impact of your online project on the public audience is the visitor count for the website where the project is published.

In our case this was not installed, so that we could not evaluate the audience’s general interest according to the number of people that visited our online resource.

Our advice/lesson learned is to make sure that these types of tools are already in place on the day of the project’s publication.

We are currently exploring the possibility of transforming the interactive e-learning presentation into a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), with a view to extending our audience and learning how to evaluate the learning progress of participating students according to the Curriculum for Excellent by Scotland Education.

Finally, the established relationship between Dr Quaggiotto and Miss Crow has open the possibility of developing more e-learning resources for the School of Life Sciences students.

Maria Martina Quaggiotto IBAHCM Staff Profile