Twenty-three scientists from MSSRF participated in the half-day RU training organised by LANSA on August 11, 2017. 

The need assessment indicated that 90% of participants had knowledge of Blogs, Twitter and Facebook, and also felt it useful to share their research via blogs and social media. However, just 21% had written a blog to present their research while another 21% had used a blog to partially talk about their work. Close to 60% of the participants had never written a blog on their research, and 63% had never tweeted about their work.

The survey also asked them to list the skills they would need to write a blog and use the social media platforms effectively, and the responses there were 22 skills reported by the participants. Knowledge about blog writing and social media was the top most requirement followed by simple language writing skills, and tips to present research information occupied the rest. 63% of respondents felt confident of blogging and using social media to share their research if given the training and tools.

The training was tailormade to the needs expressed in the Survey, and the presentation included a step-by-step gude on how to start a blog and writing principles, good Twitter etiquette, also tricks and tips on how to social media platforms for wider research uptake. Hands-on blog writing was also encourged and the participant blogs were discussed for the benefit of all. Real time tweeting was also part of the training to motivate participants to use the tools shared during the training. The hands-on part was most exciting and interesting with participants having to write about 3-5 sentences in 5 minutes on random topics.  

Results of the training 

An exit was conducted and 75% of the participants said their knowledge on blog and social media writing has increased, while the remaining 25% felt that they needed more information. 85% were convinced that writing blogs and on social media platforms are communication tools for wider audiences, while 95% agreed that the LANSA training was useful to communicate their research work more widely. 40% were confident of going ahead with blog and social media writing and 50% of the participants were somewhat confident, while 10% said that they were not confident. 95% of MSSRF scientists agreed that they would like to have additional skills support for effective research communication.