Outreach
Crossing the barrier of language, color and background through inclusion and diversity in STEM
Apart from regular outreach activities with school students Dr. Das is also one of the editors of bigyan.org.in, currently one of the largest science outreach platforms in his mother language Bengali. The Bigyan initiative has crossed the national border and has been regularly featured by several prominent Indian national media, and the website gathered more than 1.4 Million viewers so far.
Dr. Das is leading an innovative cartoon-based physics education program with award winning cartoonist Larry Gonick. They have developed hundreds of undergraduate-level physics questions, focusing on concepts that are often confusing to a learner. Dr. Das wanted to use characters from various cultures for the cartoons so that students from different background feel inclusive in the discussions of these concept cartoon questions. The cartoon questions merged physics and cultural references in an intimate way while taking care of the cultural sensitivity of different race, color and ethnicity.
The diversity in the cartoons made in his cartoon project is universal, and volunteers at the outreach platform Bigyan have translated some of these questions into Bengali for students in rural West Bengal, India (and Bangladesh as well). He has also partnered with some high school teachers to implement these cartoon questions in their classroom. During this exercise, Dr. Das took a central role in bringing real-time feedback (such as clickers adopted in many schools and colleges) to schools in rural India. Most schools in this area do not have the resources to implement a clicker system, but we successfully used alternates such as colored cards. In addition, we are currently developing scientific contents that teachers can use in their classrooms. Dr. Das is taking a leading role here as well.
Students in rural Indian schools using Bigyan patrika
Cartoon clicker questions developed by Dr. Das are now translated in Bengali and discussed in chat shows and popular science television programs in India.
A facebook live with a popular TV artist featuring the cartoon clicker questions received 87,000 views in India.
Talk show featuring Physics cartoon questions developed by Dr. Das.
Physics clicker questions were translated into Bengali and reached millions of students across the globe.
