Programme:
13th June
0900 - 1000: Lecture on mentoring students in science research projects
1000 - 1030: Break
1030 - 1200: Groupwork - Brainstorming for possible research topics
1200 - 1300: Lunch
1300 - 1500: Presentation by HCI students & Hands-on experience
14th June
0900 - 1030: Statistical Analysis
1030 - 1130: Brunch
1130 - 1330: Group Presentations
Lecture:
We began with an hour-long lecture on guiding students in scientific research. The structure of the programme was such that the amount of didactic teaching was kept to a minimum, with emphasis on experiential learning and group discussions.
The lecture itself was short and packed with useful information. The facilitators themselves shared from their experiences in mentoring students in scientific research, sharing freely about the difficulties they had and mistakes they made. The first presenter spoke on 4 main points: Finding and Evaluating Information, Extracting Relevant Information, Writing Literature Review and Citing References. The first section covered using advanced search functions such as Boolean commands, as well as evaluating the quality of information provided. While I instinctively understand the requirements of finding credible sources, it was good to have the requirements listed explicitly so that I can communicate the requirements to students. A checklist was provided for identifying a good reference:
Does your reference come from a credible source?
Is your reference current?
Is your reference objectively written, and not biased towards one point of view?
Is your reference free from error?
Does your reference properly cite its original sources?
Is the reference easy for other people to find or obtain?
With regards to extracting relevant information, the second facilitator suggested providing students with a sample scientific paper to practice reading. This serves the two-fold purpose of teaching students to extract information, with help from the teacher, as well as give students an idea of the format of report they should produce at the end of the project, and exposure to the appropriate tone of scientific papers. Teachers should help students make sense of the scientific paper by getting them first to read the abstract, then by asking helping questions such as,
"What is the question this paper is trying to answer?"
"How are these researchers trying to prove their answer?"
"Does their data support the answer that they gave at the end of the paper?"
"Is their method repeatable in our school laboratory?"
To further aid students in reading scientific papers, I thought of using the parable of the 7 blind men and the elephant. Students often get mired and muddled in the scientific terminology and the obfuscatory language, when its actually more important to get an overview of what the paper is trying to prove. There is a necessity to step back and get an overall picture of what the paper is trying to prove, which provides a framework to slot the details into. The specific details of the experimental methods used and theory is not always critical to understand, and can be skimmed over somewhat.
Not much attention was paid to writing literature reviews, although during the lecture, two thoughts occurred to me. Firstly, it seemed to me that writing literature reviews is one of the most transferable skills in the whole scientific research process - students will have to write literature reviews no matter what tertiary course they pursue, and writing literature reviews is simply testing their reading for understanding. Secondly, I realised that it would greatly help my marking of literature reviews if I limited students to exactly 5 references, and required them to attach hardcopies of the research paper to their proposal so I can see if they have really read and understood the concepts involved.
The last section on citing references properly was not particularly remarkable, since reference-citing is a fairly mechanical procedure.
Groupwork:
We were told to brainstorm for a possible research project that secondary school students could do, and to do up a proposal presentation. We were given a list of project titles for inspiration, although my group didn't pay much attention to it.
The good thing about this groupwork was that I got to tap off other teachers' experiences conducting research projects - they had first-hand experience mentoring students, and knew what was feasible, as well as considerations in selecting projects.
We first toyed with the idea of experimenting on fruit-powered clocks / bulbs. We spent a long time discussing the parameters of the project, whether to explore different possible factors affecting e.m.f. generated or to limit the experiment to the pH of the fruit. In the end, we threw the entire idea away as having little / no real world application. It seemed that 3 lemons were needed to power a low-power LED bulb, making it impractical as a real power source.
We eventually settled on evaluating the feasibility of generating hydroelectric power in Singapore's storm drains, specifically whether installing HEP equipment would reduce the effectiveness of the drainage system. It transpired that one of our group members was a civil engineer by training, and he gave very practical suggestions about how we could construct the experimental apparatus. We planned to construct an artificial drain using water tanks, a water pump, and a PVC pipe to serve as a drain, and install water wheels of various sizes over it attached to an electric dynamo. The drainage efficiency would be measured by finding the time taken for a fixed amount of water to pass through the drain, as well as using a dipstick to measure the water level upstream of the water wheel.
Hands-on experience:
To be continued....
