February 17, 2020 ALL

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JCU Student Research Showdown – Celebration of Scholarship

JCU Student Research Showdown!

A new opportunity for students to showcase their excellence in research communication.

Students create short, two-minute videos explaining their research to a mass audience, and give TED-style talks in this exciting, new event. The judges’ top three videos receive prizes recognizing their excellence in research communication – $250, $175, and $75 for the top three videos.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Friday, March 13, 2020

APPLICATION: https://jcu.edu/form/student-research-showdown-applic

Why should I enter?

Student researchers are rarely trained to communicate effectively about their work in terms of its relevance, but throughout their career they’ll have to be able to talk to non-experts about why their research is important. We want to help JCU’s students explain their discoveries – tell their stories as researchers – to a general audience.

Regardless of whether your video is selected as a winning entry, students will have a two-minute video to show for their efforts that explains their work to friends, family, graduate school committees, and future employers.

Who can enter?

The Showdown is open to any JCU undergraduate or graduate student involved in research or creative activity in any major – humanities, science, social science, business, fine arts, and every other discipline. Your work can be an independent project or a collaboration with a professor or lab to which you have made substantive contributions. Group submissions are allowed. Just be sure that everyone with a stake in the project agrees to enter the competition. If a group project receives any award money, it will be divided evenly among group members who are currently JCU students.

How do I enter?

1. Upload your video (2 minutes maximum!) as a publicly available YouTube video.

2. Submit your information through the online application.

Research Showdown Submissions & Judging Criteria

Submissions are open to any currently enrolled undergraduate or graduate student. Videos have a strict time limit of two minutes and must be publicly accessible via YouTube. Otherwise, there are no restrictions to the format – be creative! You can talk to the camera, discuss your work in a dialog with another person, or use creative graphics, animations, and camerawork to make the video visually appealing. Remember, the goal is to make a general, non-expert audience understand what you did in your research, and why it matters.

Our judges consider the following characteristics when rating videos:

· The hook: Does the student capture the audience’s attention and make them interested in hearing more?

· The narrative: Does the student tell a story of their methods of their trajectory as a researcher?

· Merit and quality: Do the research methods suggest rigorous scholarly or creative activity?

· Accessibility: Is the student targeting a general, rather than expert, audience?

Questions? Contact celebration@jcu.edu.