Outreach and educational activities of ALICE in the times of the pandemic

ABSTRACT

The onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020 stopped all outreach and educational activities with in-person participation. The ALICE collaboration soon adapted to the new situation imposed by lockdowns and other restrictions. The multitude of online tools and platforms available allowed us to continue reaching out to the public. In-person visits and talks were replaced by virtual visits and virtual talks, done with dedicated equipment and allowing remote audiences to see the experiment and interact with scientists. Masterclasses for high-school students were also adapted and were held online;web-based versions for the analysis programs were developed, making it easy for students at home to take part in this exciting hands-on activity and become scientists for a day. This new format made it possible to reach out to new audiences, both students and general public, who normally would not have the opportunity to travel and participate;it also motivated more colleagues to be involved in outreach. We will discuss how these online activities were implemented and the experience gained. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)