Format: ORAL

1Ashley Hamersma

1 Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA

What makes an educational experience memorable? How can education be individually relevant to students while maintaining quality and consistency? Can we as educators utilize our distinctive experiences to inform more effective communication? Developing outreach and teaching materials and habits is a lifelong and adaptive learning process, often through which we reach a main goal of scientific communication. In this discussion, I explore relevant methods incorporating interactive creativity used to foster engagement and understanding between scientist and audience, be that in the classroom or other settings we find ourselves in. I include my experiences in these roles and discuss responses to and results from different creative learning experiences I have facilitated throughout my time as an educator, and directions of interest for future work. As scientists and educators, we are situated where our connections to both roles require us to explore the most effective ways to communicate concepts to colleagues, students, and the general public. In recognizing the role our own perspectives and skills play in our teaching and communication, it is increasingly possible to utilize those differences to teach in a unique and effective way.