Telling scholarly stories: Translating research outcomes into multimedia stories for the purposes of dissemination
[Introduction]: "Universities have always focused on research, but the dissemination of research results beyond the scholarly community is often less of a priority (Armstrong, 2011) and poses serious challenges for scholars. Research is regularly published in books and in specialized scholarly journals, but both are expensive and often not readily available to the general public. The presentation of research papers at scholarly conferences is also problematic in that audiences tend to be limited to other scholars. Lack of ready access to upto-date research results means that individuals, communities and sometimes even government policy makers do not have the information they need for decision-making purposes. Moreover, students’ preoccupation with day-to-day studying and their focus on class-related work means they too are often unaware of advances in knowledge and the work professors do in their role as researchers in the academy. To address the challenge of making research results available to a wider audience, my Undergraduate Research Opportunity award focused on the creation of multimedia journalism stories for a research-focused website."