Edinburgh Beltane Training Course for Engineers

Dialogue Techniques for Public Engagement

What will the course give you?

This course has been specifically designed for engineers. It will:

• Introduce you to the principles and practice of ‘dialogue’

• Address how dialogic approaches may enhance your public engagement efforts

• Give you practice in some of the techniques used to nurture dialogue.

• Build your skills in facilitating dialogue and in designing public engagement activities using dialogic approaches and techniques

• Provide space for you to reflect on your public engagement agendas and practices.

The programme comprises four sessions over two days:

1.      Scene setting: What is dialogue and when is it useful in public engagement?

2.      Facilitations skills: How to nurture dialogue

3.      Choosing specific techniques: What techniques to use for what purposes and groups

4.      Process planning: How to design dialogic public engagement activities

The training approach will give you hands-on experience of practical techniques plus orientation and reflection on dialogic approaches to public engagement.

When and where?

Sessions 1&2: Thursday 5 May

Sessions 3&4: Thursday 12 May 2011

Both days: 9:30 to 17:00, at Heriot-Watt Post-Graduate Centre, 2.01

Who should attend?

This course is open to all engineering research and teaching staff in the Edinburgh Beltane network. The full 2-day programme is strongly recommended if you plan to conduct any form of public engagement in the near future or if you are already doing public engagement and wish to improve your capability in this direction. If you are simply curious about 'public engagement' and 'dialogue', you are encouraged to take the first day of the programme only, with the option of coming back next year for the second day of the programme. (Since the content of the programme is progressive, participants in the second day must have attended the first.)  

Places on both days are limited so do register promptly to avoid disappointment! Those who attend will have the opportunity to apply for funds to run one of two dialogic public engagement events.

We are targeting this offering of the programme at staff doing research in the engineering in the belief that this will encourage the sharing and diffusion of good practice around public engagement – and so strengthen the wider impact and visibility of engineering research.  To this end, we encourage you to attend the course with at least one other person from your research group or subject area, so as to maximise the benefits of the course for your team’s research and, potentially, for that of colleagues in your research community.  

Cost:  Free           

Providers:

The course has been developed and will be delivered by Wendy Faulkner, in collaboration with Heather Rea and Oliver Escobar.

Wendy recently retired from the University of Edinburgh where (amongst other things) she was latterly involved in a three year project doing and researching public engagement around stem cell research. She has also herself undergone two training courses on dialogic approaches: one from an independent company called Dialogue Matters, the other from Queen Margaret University.

Heather is the project manager and network coordinator of the Edinburgh Beltane Beacon for Public Engagement.  Formerly a researcher in Knowledge Management in Manufacturing Engineering, Heather has been involved in public engagement with research activities since 2005. She has also attend two courses on dialogic approaches: IAP2’s Planning for Public Participation course and a Dialogue course at Queen Margaret University.

Oliver is now a PhD student in Political Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and formerly a Researcher in Dialogic Techniques at Queen Margaret University. He has extensive experience in facilitating dialogic events. He ran the Dialogue Course at Queen Margaret University as part of his Edinburgh Beltane Public Engagement Fellowship.