Create Science Videos with Your Smartphone

SciFund Challenge and the Long Term Ecological Research Network are teaming up to offer yet another outreach training class for scientists! This one is all about learning to make short videos!

Scientists, do you want to learn how to tell the public about your science through video? Do you want to have the skills to put together compelling short videos?

But how do you get started with video? Join our community for our online course aimed at helping scientists get started with video. Over 5 weeks in July 2019, we’ll demystify the business of communicating science through video. We’ll equip you with the tools and confidence you need to get started. Plus, at the end of the class, you’ll have completed a short video about your research (perfect for your website or YouTube).

Our course is a little different than many online courses. This class, like all SciFund Challenge classes, is highly focused on collaboration between class participants. This connection by scientists across the globe and across disciplines makes our classes extremely engaging and allows participants to make rapid progress. It also makes our classes fun!

Best of all, no prior experience with outreach or video production is expected for class participants. Beginners are encouraged to jump in.

To make videos, you’ll obviously need a video camera. To minimize costs for class participants, the video camera that participants will be using is a smartphone (as many people already own them and they are capable of capturing great video, under the right conditions). There are other things that course participants should know and will need (see below).

How the class works:

Each week, participants will be given new material to learn and a new assignment that has three parts: 1) a task to complete alone, 2) a task involving others in the class, and 3) participation in a small-group TA session that will take place via video conference call. The class will take place mostly on a private forum on SciFund Challenge, that only class participants can see. In short, this class is highly collaborative! Other the TA sessions (which occur at specific times), the timing of class activities each week is highly flexible.

Multiple 1-hour TA sessions will be scheduled each week and participants are expected to participate in one each week (a participant does not need to pick the same time slot each week). The TA sessions are tentatively scheduled for the following times each week, with all times listed in Pacific Time (GMT-7). The final scheduling of TA sessions will depend upon class enrollment. Do note that the TA session times for the first week will be slightly different in order to avoid meetings on July 4th.

• Wednesday: 3-4 PM, 6-7 PM
• Thursday: 9-10 AM, 4-5 PM
• Friday: 8-9 AM, 10-11 AM, 2-3 PM, 5-6 PM
• Saturday: 9-10 AM, 4-5 PM