Ohio University students are being provided the opportunity to present their research and creative activity through the virtual OU Research Expo.
Registration for participation by video or social media is open until March 15. If students are creating a video, it must be three minutes.
“What we’re asking students to do is just to basically tell us what did you do, why did you do it, how did you do it, and why should we care, all in 3 minutes,” Roxanne Malé-Brune, director of grant development for OU’s research division, said.
The social media side of the expo was introduced last year as the COVID-19 pandemic caused the expo to go virtual.
“A lot of our students might have social media accounts for their own personal use,” Malé-Brune said. “What we’re seeing is that academia and industry and government entities, all of them now are developing social media accounts as a way to communicate. These students will also be encouraged to communicate via social media.”
The addition of social media has also allowed for many of the posts to be archived and saved to look back on. This year, the library is hoping to add these posts into it’s archive.
“This year we will be creating access to videos of the projects through the Ohio Open Library, which will make them discoverable there via search engines like Google,” Neil Romanosky, dean of university libraries, said in an email.
Romanosky also said in the email that he thinks participating provides students with a great opportunity to share and celebrate their original research and creative activity with a broad audience.
Students who would like to participate must register by March 15. If they are completing a video, it must be turned in when completing registration. The social media post doesn’t have to be posted until April 8. Those who participate will also receive a t-shirt after the event.
In the past, when the event was held in-person, the judges would see as many as 850 submissions of various formats.
“In person (there were) over 850 people presenting their research and creative activity in any way that is legal and safe,” Malé-Brune said. “It was posters, exhibits and performances. (There were) flying cars, multimedia presentations. Everything that you can imagine plus 2000 community members and university people who would come.”
Anyone who wants to showcase their work who is a student has the opportunity to do so. Some students are even being ambitious enough to submit two different projects. Liahna Brown, a senior studying media arts and studies, submitted two different works.
“I think mainly with both of the projects, we kind of just really want to showcase them and let other people see what we work on,” Brown said.
The team with the project that wins first place will be awarded $150 and the second place team will be awarded $75.
