Co-Creation with Science Gallery Dublin

The vision of Science Gallery Dublin is a world where creativity knows no boundaries.  Our learning programmes are designed to encourage all young people to develop the key competencies needed to shape our brave new world, and to fiercely engage with a variety of thorny issues at the intersection of art, science and society.  Co-Creation, co-design and ideation methodologies form an integral framework which underpins all of Science Gallery Dublin’s learning, engagement and outreach programmes.

Typically, our learning programmes consist of a series of workshops, talks and creative experiments which prompt students to reflect on their own creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking.  Programmes are themed around various topics that Science Gallery Dublin is investigating as a whole through our exhibitions and events programming.  Past themes have included Plastic, Open Labs, Intimacy and most recently Bias.  Through collaboration, co-created activities, and embedded reflection and evaluation the youth voice is at the centre of the work we present.  We aim to foster a learner-led approach which is designed to empower our participants.

“Cheat! – do the right thing?” Science Gallery 2021

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Science Gallery Dublin has been forced to close its doors for much of 2020 and 2021.  This means that we have been unable to work in person.  As a response, we have developed and delivered virtual online engagement programmes for our young learners in high school.  Operating in this way has enabled our programme to be accessible to learners from all across Ireland, and specifically learners who are homeschooled and learners from schools specifically designated by the Irish government as operating in areas of heightened socio-economic disadvantage.  To support this new virtual way of operating, we developed extensive evaluation tools and generated key learnings after each programme iteration, with programmes being adapted and revised based on these evaluation results.  This has culminated in an optimised online engagement experience across our typical four-day programmes.

In February 2021 we implemented this structure for our INTEGRITY online programme for 15-17 year old learners in Irish high schools.  This equated to a total of 432 contact hours with these students.  The programme was titled “Cheat! – do the right thing?” and was designed to empower learners for issues around research integrity in their school work and daily lives.  The overall objective of the programme was empowerment of the student, with specific learning outcomes focussing on the purpose and implications of drawing on the work of others, collaboration, collection analyses and presentation of data, and dealing with cheating and other unethical behaviour.

In order to explore these topics we developed and delivered workshops around a variety of topics including fast fashion, art and music, space, epidemiology, technology, communications and animal experimentation.  Throughout the week learners participated in a variety of interactive, collaborative and interdisciplinary workshops and discussion fora.  This was designed to lead to a final task which required the students to co-create materials and tools for teaching research integrity to their peers in high schools.  The students built on their learnings and experiences of the week and identified research integrity issues of particular relevance to themselves and their daily lives.  The focus was on identification of these research integrity related issues, and how they might identify, highlight and address such issues.  Through quick co-creation design sprints learners ideated, defined, and prototyped their ideas in small groups working collaboratively.  They then refined and presented their ideas to the larger group.  This acted as a final outcome for the learners, presenting their co-created exhibition to each other and the facilitators.

The students produced a variety of ideas and concepts including:

• Frameworks and procedures for students to anonymously “confess” instances of their own cheating and unethical behaviour;
• A “fabrication station” to show how words and phrases can be taken (both accidentally and deliberately) out of context;
• The positives and negatives of deep fake technology for research integrity.

The co-creation process involved the use of jamboards where students were free to brain-storm ideas.  Creative thinking was strongly encouraged, and students were asked to think of ideas which were disruptive.  They were also told that all ideas were valid and useful.  A selection of jamboards for the “confession” idea are shown below.  These jamboards give an idea of the ideation and co-design process and the iterative approach to creating ideas and concepts.