This entire week is dedicated to addressing communication skills. 

The 4 modules present different aspects of communication proposing tips and resources of inspiration in developing science communication, reporting, public speaking and networking skills amongst your students.

The Horizon Europe strategic plan for 2025-2027 includes these strategic orientations: Green transition; Digital transition; and A more resilient, competitive, inclusive and democratic Europe. In our understanding, communication, as a soft skill, strengthens the impact that STEM educational professional working in green transition field can translate to their students.

Every STEM teacher should be a good communicator. Here we have three important topics: reporting, public speaking, and networking. In academia we are used to present fact-based research, however, to translate it to a broader society or students might become cumbersome and time consuming. Nonetheless, the skills to enable researchers to make their research available to the society can be one of the driving forces towards green transition. Talking about "reporting", public speaking networking means to be able to choose the best platform, to structure a message, to have a strong and memorable presence in the field of green transition.

A second objective of the Week is to let you to be able to design learning tasks to develop communication skills amongst HEI students. We provide various examples and suggestions to integrate these communication soft skills directly into existing STEM curriculum. This allows educators to enhance their own teaching styles by incorporating soft skills as a valuable component, fostering versatile future professionals with a strong foundation in both technical expertise and effective communication.

The third objective of the Week is to enable STEM education professional in creating and implementing methods to investigate the main assets of communication: communication process, participants, and results.

By exploring this topic presented in this Week, you will be able to:

  • Define the concept of communication, and craft a communication message;
  • Understand the characteristics of a science communication message;
  • Identify how to carry out reporting activities more fluently also through the application of data science techniques;
  • Understand how to develop public speaking skills amongst your students;
  • Explain the importance of networking for career advancement and professional growth;
  • Recognize the importance of social media platforms for professional networking;
  • Gain insights on crafting a strong personal brand for academic success.

Keywords: communication, reporting, networking, personal brand, soft skills, green skills, green transition, public speaking.

Digital transition