We need to create environments that allow scientists and researchers to apply and sharpen skills, not just learn them

This year marks 12 years since I launched SciComm Success as a business, and around 15 years since I started helping scientists and researchers build and refine the skills they need to share their science.

A lot has changed in that time.

One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is how quickly expectations around communication have expanded for researchers.

In many research environments today, scientists are expected not only to produce excellent work, but also to explain it across disciplines, contribute to public conversations, engage with policymakers, and articulate the broader relevance of their research.

None of these expectations are unreasonable. If anything, they reflect the growing importance of research in addressing complex societal challenges. What is less clear is where researchers are supposed to develop these abilities.

In many institutions, communication training still takes the form of short workshops, optional sessions, or online resources introducing frameworks for storytelling, presentation design, or public engagement.

These are useful starting points. In fact, much of my own work focuses on helping researchers develop exactly these kinds of skills.

But communication skills tend to develop less through exposure to frameworks, and more through repeated attempts to explain complex ideas to people who do not share the same assumptions. That process of explanation, confusion, feedback, and revision is inherently social.

For many years the conversation around science communication training has centred on the skills themselves: storytelling, presentation design, audience awareness.

And these skills matter. Without them, researchers often struggle to structure or articulate their ideas clearly. But the longer I do this work, the more I find myself thinking about the environments in which these skills are practised.

During the COVID years, many communication workshops moved online. That shift was necessary, and online formats still have a place. They make it possible to reach large groups, introduce useful frameworks, and run short interactive sessions.

For small groups within the same discipline (for example, colleagues who already know each other and want to refine specific skills) these formats can work well.

But they do not always create the conditions in which communication ability really develops.

Communication improves through practice, feedback, and iteration with other people in the room. Through trying to explain an idea, seeing confusion appear, adjusting the explanation, and trying again.

In a world where researchers can increasingly learn frameworks and theory from AI tools or online resources in a matter of minutes, that shift, from simply introducing communication skills to creating environments where those skills can be applied and sharpened, feels like an important one for the years ahead.

For me, at any rate.