A NOVEL WAY TO ACHIEVE BROADER IMPACTS WITH LARGE AUDIENCES: AGI'S CRITICAL ISSUES WEBINARS

Technological advances over the last twenty years have made it easier to share information with colleagues, educators, policy-makers, and the public in new and interesting ways. However, it is a considerable challenge for non-geoscience experts such as policymakers, K-12 educators, and the public to find and sort through geoscience information to find what is reliable and relevant for their needs. Likewise, effectively reaching and consistently engaging those audiences is a significant challenge in an expanding world of on-demand information. We will discuss how the American Geosciences Institute’s Critical Issues program is successfully reaching thousands of people in state and local agencies and other employment sectors via its webinar series.

Critical Issues webinars feature geoscience experts from academia, industry, and federal, state, and local governments who discuss decision-relevant geoscience research and case studies. These webinars consistently attract over 800 registrants per webinar from a wide variety of employment sectors and locations. Webinars allow researchers to directly demonstrate the benefits of their research to society, an important component of NSF’s Broader Impacts requirements for new grant proposals, and to communicate the relevance of geoscience research to decision-making at all levels. Recent webinar topics include mitigating flood risk, state responses to induced seismicity, desalination as a source of fresh water, and planning for coastal storm and erosion hazards.

Feedback about the webinars has been very positive; attendees have used webinar content to inform decision-making at the state and local level, supplement K-12 and college courses, and learn about potential geoscience career pathways. We will share lessons learned about organizing webinars designed for an audience of decision makers – a group that is not traditionally targeted by Broader Impacts activities from NSF grantees. We will also present best practices for disseminating webinar-related content across the web so that it is more discoverable and accessible to non-specialist audiences, as well as methods for assessing the reach and impact of such information.