About the course

Geoscience Outreach is an innovative 4th year undergraduate course in the School of GeoSciences aiming to provide students with the opportunity to develop their own science communication and engagement project.

Our course is featured on the University of Edinburgh Teaching Matters blog, you can check out our blog post below to find out more about the course and the role of outreach and engagement in teaching.

GeoScience Outreach: teaching science communication ‘beyond the programme’ and outside of the ‘Ivory Tower’

We are all very passionate about outreach and are keen to share our love for science with a wide and diverse audience! On this website you can find details about the Geoscience Outreach projects, as well as information on how to use the products we have created – lesson plans, teaching aids, leaflets, videos, and much more!

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Course organiser: Isla Myers-Smith
Teaching Team: Brian Cameron, Colin Graham, Andrew Cross, Kay Douglas
External contributors: Bonnie Auyeung (Psychology)
Tutors: Isla Simmons, Sophie Flack, Rachel Wignall and Jakob Assmann
Alumni and guest contributors: Gergana Daskalova, Archie Crofton, Rosanne Smith (Children’s University Scotland)
Past members of the teaching team: Jenny Tait

Trinity Gardening Club

All the teaching materials from the Trinity Gardening Club project can be downloaded here. Materials represent a teacher’s booklet, an original board game, powerpoint presentations, activity sheets and more! Small allotments, big ideas Trinity Academy Gardening club is a result of the collaboration between Trinity Academy and the University of Edinburgh, represented by Gergana Daskalova. Creating… Continue reading Trinity Gardening Club

Biodiversity in Scotland

Biodiversity is a buzz word that receives a lot of attention in both the scientific and public communities. The term ‘biodiversity’ makes you think about the tropical rainforests …not about Scotland! But Scotland has a lot to offer in terms of biodiversity and things have changed a lot in this little country. In order to… Continue reading Biodiversity in Scotland

Disco Soup

DiscoSoup into Schools (DSS) is a teaching project about food production, food waste & cooking, designed for primary school* students. Food is a great interdisciplinary topic. This project links many Experiences & Outcomes of the Curriculum of Excellence, Scotland (CofE) such as Heath & Wellbeing, Science, Social Science and Expressive Arts. It is a broad module, acting… Continue reading Disco Soup

Geoscience outreach proved to me that somewhere in me I had the confidence and skill to not only create lessons that fit within the Scottish school curriculum but deliver them as well. The support provided by my lecturers and supervisors helped me succeed by encouraging the ideas that would work and letting me bounce ideas around with them.

Hannah Stevens

Geoscience Outreach provided me with the unique opportunity to combine my scientific knowledge with my horticulture family history – I created Trinity Gardening Club and taught secondary school pupils about agro-ecology and wildlife-friendly farming. The teaching experience I got re-affirmed my decision to pursue teaching as a career, and inspired me to strive for innovation and community engagement.