Now that you have learned skills and principles you can use for knowledge dissemination, it is time to put them into practice. Your task is to create a documentary short about a topic of public interest.

The topic and content of your documentary will depend on your situation.

If you have previously done research (for example, perhaps you have done research as part of a course and your course is now requiring you to create a documentary short about that research), then the documentary short might be about your research. In this case, you may be able to interview research participants and community members (if any) involved in your research and include parts of those interviews in your documentary.

On the other hand, perhaps you have not conducted any research of your own, but will instead be reporting on research that others have done. In this case, it will likely not be possible for you to interview research participants directly. However, if the academic or newspaper articles you are reporting on contain quotes from research participants, you may be able to include those quotes in your documentary. In addition, you might be able to interview the researchers whose work you are discussing, as well as other stakeholders such as community members or relevant public officials.

Assignment requirements

The documentary short should meet the following criteria:

• Technical:
  • The documentary should be 5 to 10 minutes in length
  • The documentary should be audio-based or audio- and video-based
• Topic:
  • The documentary should either:
    • Be about a specific study reported in an academic article; or
    • Discuss a topic about which one or more studies have been done (in this case, your documentary could focus on multiple studies)
  • The topic should be a topic of public interest
• Content:
  • The documentary should make clear:
    • What the research is about
    • What the findings of the research are
  • The documentary should include participants in the research or members of the community (or communities) that is the subject of the research
  • The documentary should show how the research is relevant to the public or the communities that were a part of the research