By Hywel Jenkins
During my five-day work experience at the University College London Interaction Centre, I had the opportunity to engage deeply with the realms of science communication, research inclusivity, and the integration of artificial intelligence in academic and professional settings. My work experience supervisor was Prof. Anna Cox. This post discusses my daily experiences, covering the activities I completed, the knowledge I gained, and the challenges I faced.
Day 1: Introduction and Exploration
On the first morning, I completed a brief tour of the UCL campus and the UCLIC office, which included a fire safety induction. This tour was not just to help me with orientation; it also provided a historical context, as I visited Jeremy Bentham, the founder of UCL. Learning about Bentham’s contributions set the stage for understanding UCL’s long-standing commitment to progressive education and research. Later in the morning, I watched several YouTube videos on science communication. These videos were important for laying the groundwork for my week’s projects, as they introduced me to the fundamentals of creating effective science communication artefacts. Initially, I felt nervous at the sheer volume of information and the tasks ahead, but this session helped mitigate some of my stress by providing a clear framework for approaching my assignments.
In the afternoon, I attended an event at the Equalities Research Centre, which focused on making research more equitable and inclusive. The session was interesting as it showcased the various initiatives within UCL’s brain sciences faculty aimed at fostering inclusivity. One thing I learned from this was the different impacts of various types of dementia on brain functions, such as memory and language skills.
Day 2: Blog Post Creation and Workshop Attendance
The second day began with downloading and reviewing the work of master’s students, which I would later feature in a promotional blog post for my Work Experience Supervisor. This task was both educational and demanding. I delved into diverse topics, including the effective use of large language models (LLMs) through prompt engineering, the benefits and challenges of the gig economy, and the integration of AI in the workplace. Furthermore, I attended a meeting with Yoana, one of my work experience supervisor’s PhD students, to gain deeper insights into her project. This meeting was important as I learned valuable information in it which I needed for my upcoming tasks.
In the afternoon, Anna had to assist with a workplace workshop, and I joined, observing from the back of the room. During this time, I utilised AI tools like ChatGPT to draft the promotional blog post. This experience was particularly beneficial as it demonstrated how AI can streamline the creative process and enhance productivity. However, staying focused amidst the ongoing workshop was a bit challenging due to the long time period that it went on for.
Day 3: Finalising Blog Post and Starting Information Page
On the third morning, I finished the blog post about the master’s students’ work. This task helped me to improve my skills in prompt engineering, and my overall skills in using AI tools for creating content. Following this, I attended a team meeting that offered further insights into the projects of Yoana and another PhD student, Shiping. The information I learned here was important for my second major project of the week.
In the afternoon, I began working on creating an information page for Anna’s website, which detailed the ongoing research projects within her research group. This involved finding information from different sources I had come across during the week, including my notes from meetings, posters, and research papers which Anna gave me. Later, I attended a seminar by a guest speaker from America (Prof Orit Shaer) who discussed the use of virtual reality (VR) for remote work. The seminar (which you can watch on YouTube here) highlighted the benefits of VR in enhancing focus, reducing stress, and improving convergent thinking in team settings. The day concluded with another exploration of the UCL campus, in order to go and see the previous homes of UCLIC within UCL.
Day 4: Continuing Projects and Starting Work Experience Report
The fourth day was primarily focused on continuing and nearly completing the information page about my work experience supervisor’s research group, using AI to help me make the logo opposite for these projects. Working from home presented some concentration challenges, but I managed to stay focused and learned many things from the ongoing research projects in the research group, including about the Research compliance buddy being created and the research on the use of AI tools in academia.
In the afternoon, I began working on my final project, this report writing about my work experience experiences at UCLIC. This involved reflecting on the week’s activities and thinking about what I had learned this far into my week. I also continued to refine my skills in using AI tools to aid in report writing. Concentrating for extended periods without breaks was difficult, but I managed to push through and make most of the progress that I needed to on this task.
Day 5: Finishing my tasks off on the final day
My morning was primarily focused on completing the remainder of the tasks which I had left. I worked on feedback from my supervisor, learning how to write more engaging texts and how to more easily proofread my work, by using the text to speech feature in Microsoft word. Following this work, I began to work on some ideas for social media posts to act as an advertisement for a survey that my supervisor is running.
Following my lunch break, I continued to work on these twitter posts, trying to make the most eye-catching and interesting advertisements to try and draw in the target audience of UK academics, lecturers and PhD students, leveraging both LLMs for ideas and AI image creation models such as Dalle 3 to achieve this. Following this, Anna showed me how to add the different artefacts that I had created over the week to word press, the tools she uses to create her website so that my work could appear on the website.
Conclusion
My work experience at UCLIC was both enriching and insightful. It provided a comprehensive understanding of the intersection between science communication, research inclusivity, and AI integration as well as what life working at a university is really like. Despite initial nervousness and challenges due to my unfamiliar environment, I successfully completed my assigned tasks. This experience significantly enhanced my skills in using AI tools, understanding inclusive research practices, and effectively communicating scientific ideas. It has been a pivotal experience that has contributed greatly to my personal and professional growth, helping me to better consider my career and educational decisions for the future.
