Shooting video clips has fostered collaborations and showcased my students’ strengths in making science accessible.
As a university professor and structural-engineering researcher with a multidisciplinary background, I am constantly searching for inspiring ways to help people understand and appreciate science. However, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted my in-person outreach events. At first, my vlog was a hub of short clips in English that I had used as a teaching resource. My students took the lead in editing these clips, translating them, adding Chinese captions and uploading them.
The negative comments only made me more determined, and at my next lab meeting I raised the idea of launching a lab vlog. Several of my graduate students were over the moon. They had been vlogging for fun in their spare time but had never thought about using vlogs in an academic setting. Just like that, I recruited a vlogging team to coordinate our efforts, and we made our very first original video in early February.
Shooting usually happens on Thursday afternoons. At first we filmed with a smartphone, and later bought a GoPro action camera for better resolution. I have had so much fun when the GoPro is rolling. Sometimes an actor spouts some internet slang and we have to stop filming because the camera operator is laughing too hard.Shooting clips has created new dynamics compared with our regular lab meetings.