MM
Reviewed Dec 21, 2025
Dr Melanie has done a great job with the material in the course. She is interesting to listen to and I felt I came away with a solid understanding from starting out completely green.
The content was very good and informative, but at times the tone was infantilizing and made me feel like I'm being talked to like a teenager, when the course is clearly aimed at adults with experience in science communication. Furthermore, there was a large section discussing bad and good ways of communicating that was very inconsiderate of people with certain disabilities, especially autistic people. Labeling behaviors and traits such as monotone voices or unsteady eye contact or irregular speech patterns as bad and things to unlearn is just ableist and goes against many of the other messages that the Designing Effective Science Communication Specialization promotes, such as inclusivity, diversity and the importance of representation in science. It is actively harmful to perpetuate the idea that only a certain way of speaking, standing and moving is acceptable and likeable and that deviations from this ideal need to be "fixed".