Citizen science programs offer opportunities for K-12 students to engage in authentic science inquiry. However, these programs often fall short of including learners as agents in the entire process, and thus contrast with the growing open science movement within scientific communities. Notably, study ideation and peer review, which are central to the making of science, are typically reserved for professional scientists. This study describes the implementation of an open science curriculum that engages high school students in a full cycle of scientific inquiry. We explored the focus and quality of students’ study designs and peer reviews, and their perceptions of open science based on their participation in the program. Specifically, we implemented a human brain and behavior citizen science unit in 6 classrooms across 3 high schools. After learning about open science and citizen science, students (N = 104) participated in scientist-initiated research studies, and then collaboratively proposed their own studies to investigate personally interesting questions about human behavior and the brain. Students then peer reviewed proposals of students from other schools. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of students’ artifacts created in-unit and on a pre and posttest, we describe their interests, abilities, and self-reported experiences with study design and peer review. Our findings suggest that participation in open science in a human brain and behavior research context can engage students with critical aspects of experiment design, as well as with issues that are unique to human subjects research, such as research ethics. Meanwhile, the quality of students’ study designs and reviews changed in notable, but mixed, ways: While students improved in justifying the importance of research studies, they did not improve in their abilities to align methods to their research questions. In terms of peer review, students generally reported that their peers' feedback was helpful, but our analysis showed that student reviewers struggled to articulate concrete recommendations for improvement. In light of these findings, we discuss the need for curricula that support the development of research and review abilities by building on students’ interests, while also guiding students in transferring these abilities across a range of research foci.
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Students Learning About Science by Investigating an Unfolding Pandemic
We explored the COVID-19 pandemic as a context for learning about the role of science in a global health crisis. In spring 2020, at the beginning of the first pandemic-related lockdown, we worked with a high school teacher to design and implement a unit on human brain and behavior science. The unit guided her 17 students in creating studies that explored personally relevant questions about the pandemic to contribute to a citizen science platform. Pre-/postsurveys, student artifacts, and student and teacher interviews showed increases in students’ fascination with science—a driver of engagement and career preference—and sense of agency as citizen scientists. Students approached science as a tool for addressing their pandemic-related concerns but were hampered by the challenges of remote schooling. These findings highlight both the opportunities of learning from a global crisis, and the need to consider how that crisis is still affecting learners.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1908482
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10332570
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- AERA Open
- Volume:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 2332-8584
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 233285842110548
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract COVID-19 creates an opportunity for science classrooms to relate content about viruses to students’ personal experiences with the pandemic. Previous researchers have shown that students are interested in crisis situations like disease outbreaks; however, they primarily acquire information about these events through internet sources which are often biased. We argue that it is important to understand student interest, concerns, and information-seeking behaviors related to COVID-19 to support science classroom learning and engagement about the virus and other potential outbreaks. We surveyed 224 high school students and analyzed their responses to six open-ended questions. We found that students expressed the most interest in topics related to the origin of COVID-19 and vaccines. Their greatest concerns included contracting the virus or someone they know contracting the virus and vaccine distribution. Of our sample, only 6.7% reported using their teachers as their source of COVID-19 information. Science classrooms have the potential to pique students’ situational interest by discussing COVID-19 topics that are important to students, which can increase their academic performance, content knowledge, attention, and engagement in learning about viruses. Moreover, classroom instruction about COVID-19 by teachers has shown to alleviate students’ stress and anxiety. We provide key areas of student interest about COVID-19 to help educators address students’ questions and improve curricular resources on viral pandemics.
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Abstract Background COVID‐19 has spurred a global crisis that has disrupted everyday lives and impacted the traditional methods, experiences, and abilities of higher education institutions' students, faculty, and staff, especially at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Purpose/Hypothesis Given the pressing need demonstrated by the National Academies to advance the utilization of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education at HBCUs, this study aimed to explore the abrupt transition to remote teaching and learning at HBCUs guided by the following research question: How has COVID‐19 impacted the success and persistence of engineering students, faculty, and staff at HBCUs?
Design/Methods Three surveys were developed, tested, piloted, and sent to HBCU stakeholders using a snowball sampling approach via email and social media outreach.
Results Of the 171 student respondents (126 engineering majors), 79% agreed that not being able to access faculty in person affected their academic performance. Additionally, across all HBCU stakeholders' surveys, students had a statistically significant higher response when asked if the transition to virtual learning increased their overall levels of stress and anxiety.
Conclusions During a global pandemic, HBCUs continue to provide a culture of support and inclusion for students, faculty, and staff in engineering. Increased stress levels experienced by students indicate that a safe and adequate transition back to campus is essential for their social and academic persistence. Due to the well‐documented inequities HBCUs faced before the pandemic, the impact of this unprecedented on their continued contributions toward broadening participation in engineering for students should be further explored.
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In March 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic forced universities across the United States to immediately stop face-to-face activities and transition to virtual instruction. While this transition was not easy for anyone, the shift to online learning was especially difficult for STEM courses, particularly engineering, which has a strong practical/laboratory component. Additionally, underrepresented students (URMs) in engineering experienced a range of difficulties during this transition. The purpose of this paper is to highlight underrepresented engineering students’ experiences as a result of COVID-19. In particular, we aim to highlight stories shared by participants who indicated a desire to share their experience with their instructor. In order to better understand these experiences, research participants were asked to share a story, using the novel data collection platform SenseMaker, based on the following prompt: Imagine you are chatting with a friend or family member about the evolving COVID-19 crisis. Tell them about something you have experienced recently as an engineering student. Conducting a SenseMaker study involves four iterative steps: 1) Initiation is the process of designing signifiers, testing, and deploying the instrument; 2) Story Collection is the process of collecting data through narratives; 3) Sense-making is the process of exploring and analyzing patterns of the collection of narratives; and 4) Response is the process of amplifying positive stories and dampening negative stories to nudge the system to an adjacent possible (Van der Merwe et al. 2019). Unlike traditional surveys or other qualitative data collection methods, SenseMaker encourages participants to think more critically about the stories they share by inviting them to make sense of their story using a series of triads and dyads. After completing their narrative, participants were asked a series of triadic, dyadic, and sentiment-based multiple-choice questions (MCQ) relevant to their story. For one MCQ, in particular, participants were required to answer was “If you could do so without fear of judgment or retaliation, who would you share this story with?” and were given the following options: 1) Family 2) Instructor 3) Peers 4) Prefer not to answer 5) Other. A third of the participants indicated that they would share their story with their instructor. Therefore, we further explored this particular question. Additionally, this paper aims to highlight this subset of students whose primary motivation for their actions were based on Necessity. High-level qualitative findings from the data show that students valued Grit and Perseverance, recent experiences influenced their Sense of Purpose, and their decisions were majorly made based on Intuition. Chi-squared tests showed that there were not any significant differences between race and the desire to share with their instructor, however, there were significant differences when factoring in gender suggesting that gender has a large impact on the complexity of navigating school during this time. Lastly, ~50% of participants reported feeling negative or extremely negative about their experiences, ~30% reported feeling neutral, and ~20% reported feeling positive or extremely positive about their experiences. In the study, a total of 500 micro-narratives from underrepresented engineering students were collected from June – July 2020. Undergraduate and graduate students were recruited for participation through the researchers’ personal networks, social media, and through organizations like NSBE. Participants had the option to indicate who is able to read their stories 1) Everyone 2) Researchers Only, or 3) No one. This work presents qualitative stories of those who granted permission for everyone to read.more » « less
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We describe an online citizen science platform (www.mindhive.science) for human brain and behavior research that uses a participatory science learning approach to engage learners in the full spectrum of scientific inquiry. Building on an open science philosophy, it features a collaborative study design environment comprising an experiment builder, a database of validated tasks and surveys, and a public-facing study page; a peer review center where students are able to engage with and reflect on studies designed by peers from their own schools and schools around the globe; and GDPR-compliant data collection, data management, and data visualization and interpretation functionality. We describe student-initiated research generated during the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate how the platform supports student-teacher-scientist community partnerships for participatory learning in authentic inquiry.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211054850
