Over the past few weeks, I've been helping with an online course on using Instagram for science communication hosted by SciFund and the LSU College of Science. (I wrote a lot of the materials, which you can find here, here and here.

The course has been a ton of fun so far. We started with around 80 students, and people taking the course (mostly scientists and science students, but also some science communicators) have been very active in producing content. (See for yourself on Instagram - browse the hashtag #LSUscifund). As a class, we've produced over 200 posts so far!

In planning this course, we wanted to go beyond Instagram button-pushing and really give science professionals the tools to produce effective visual content with specific science communication goals and audiences in mind. We've covered defining and finding an audience on Instagram (hint: effective use of hashtags is very important), the power of experiential visual content (taking an audience with you on a journey through your scientific experiences), and trends of how scientists today appear to be using Instagram.

I thought it would be fun to highlight some of the key takeaways or discussion points that have come up so far, from my perspective. So if you enjoy Instagram and science, read on!

1. Share the Human Side of Scientific Research.

Through the power of visuals, scientists on Instagram can communicate more than scientific research findings. They can post selfies, share visuals that communicate lab or field experiences and science-in-progress, talk about their own lives as scientists and show people what a day-in-the-life of a scientist looks like.

During one of our LSUSciFund class discussions, we talked about using the hashtag #babyscientists to share images of ourselves as children and stories of how we found science as a career path and passion. We also discussed research showing that people engage more with visuals that include human faces or a human element. That goes for science selfies, too.