Tuesday

Teacher D. Fleming says:

“ORBYTS is definitely one of the coolest things I've been exposed to in my 15 year career.”

Teacher W. Whyatt says:

“It’s clear to me that the ORBYTS project has been the most successful project we have been fortunate to work with and its importance cannot be overstated.”

So what is ORBYTS, how is it having such a profound impact on school students and how can you as a space researcher or teacher get involved?

ORBYTS is a movement run by researchers and teachers that creates partnerships between scientists and schools. This provides students with relatable science role models while empowering them to conduct their own original space research projects. This structure of regular interventions, role models and active ownership of scientific research is proving to be transformative, particularly for students from groups historically excluded from science (e.g. our partner schools report 100% increases in girls uptake of A-level physics following ORBYTS at GCSE). In the last 3 years, ORBYTS also enabled 150+ UK school students to author published scientific research.

In 2021 alone, our fantastic astro researchers partnered with school students to support projects on: exoplanets, aurorae, AI and machine learning, space plasmas, Mars, comets, the Sun, X-ray astronomy and black holes. We’ll showcase a whistle-stop tour through some of these projects, where possible letting recorded presentations by the schools do the talking for us.

We’ll also speak briefly on the best practice seminars/workshops on inclusivity, teaching, communication and management training that we offer for interested researchers and on how we pay PhD students for their time producing and delivering projects.

Finally, we’ll close by explaining how you can get involved, if you think this sounds interesting, and how we can with creating and delivering your own research-with-school projects.