"In the first step of the project, knowledge about the status of research, good practices and projects on science education was gathered. Furthermore, existing participatory science contest were evaluated and lessons learned from other contests were screened. Additionally, educational resources were collected for supporting the SciChallenge participants.
The second step of the project focused on the preparation of the SciChallenge contest. Against the background of the ethical issues elaboration and insights from the projects’ qualitative survey, the contest concept was developed and tested in use cases for informing the platform programming. Furthermore, toolkits and guidelines for both participants and supervisors were developed.
In the third step, the SciChallenge web platform was developed as the main entry point for the contest. Additionally, it shows the progress of the contest on a dedicated statistics page and by listing the projects. Furthermore, it is also considered as a channel for future engagement and awareness. A final evaluation of the platform confirmed its intuitiveness und user-friendliness.
The fourth step aimed at running the SciChallenge contest. Promotion through the partner-networks, targeted social media ads and workshops with schools helped to get a sufficient number of participants. 438 projects from 28 different countries were submitted and generated more than 4 millon ""views"" on YouTube and Slideshare as well as more than 21.000 ""likes"". Through a combined online community rating and jury rating, 12 winning project were awarded at the public event in Vienna in July 2017. The event was attended by more than 500 visitors, who also selected the three audience awards winners.
In the fifth step, the content of the digital awareness and engagement channels was created. It includes a filterable and searchable collection of national research-based organisations and companies, open days and information events at universities, science events and internships. Also supporting institutions and sponsors were also invited and are listed on the platform.
The sixth step focused on the development of the communication plan and the design of dissemination or communication material such as the project website, flyers, posters, roll-ups, and factsheets. A regular newsletter was distributed and social media channels (Twitter and Facebook) were installed and maintained. Furthermore the project was presented at several conferences and workshops. Two articles in conference proceedings were published and one article that is published in 2018 in the peer reviewed journal IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.
The coordinator supported the partners by providing templates and structured reporting or monitoring tools and ensured the common understanding about the main direction of the project. Furthermore, the coordinator was also responsible for the final quality check of the 47 deliverables that were submitted.
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