Science Seminar: Science Capstone Research Projects as a Class in High School

Abstract

Inquiry-based, student-lead research may be a pinnacle of high school science education, and the implementation of inquiry at all grades is of profound importance. At The Beacon High School in New York City, all seniors, regardless of their scientific proclivity or interest, completed original science research projects as a graduation requirement. These projects were undertaken and developed through a one-semester course called Senior Science Seminar. In this article, I describe the rationale and outline of Beacon's Science Seminar course philosophy, and I provide a general guide to the course materials, much of which I have made available online. The body of this article is organized around four conceptual themes for supporting student research that were important course anchors. These will be useful for other similar inquiry courses that have the goal of supporting original student research projects. In this article, I also report about my Science Senior Seminar teaching experiences and recommendations (by the third year, an additional instructor also taught the course). The major student product for the course is a research paper with an Abstract, an Introduction, Methods, Research Findings, Results, and a Discussion. Usually each paper was about 10 pages in length. Each student also created a PowerPoint presentation that accompanied this paper. Science Seminar required 31 one-hour group sessions as a class over a four-and-a-half month period (during either the first or second half of the NYC school year), see Figure 1. Students presented their projects to the Science Seminar Class, and to an additional science teacher who was unfamiliar with the students' work, during a school-wide project assessment week. Our Science Senior Seminar goals for each student in are shown in Table 1. Example titles for student work are shown in Table 2. Additional materials (which can also be used to expand the reader's understanding of the course philosophy) are hyperlinked to this article to support the design of similar courses or classroom research modules. A Wiggins and McTighe template, created using Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) is one online support. See http://drjreid.com/senior_science_capstone.htm for this course template, a link to an earlier version of the Science Seminar Handbook given to my students, a syllabus, and many other science seminar documents. Figure 1. The Science Seminar Class Sessions. Session (two sessions per week at Beacon): 1. What Science Seminar Is, Including a Model Presentation 2. What Mentorship Is. Also: Brainstorming a Project Idea 3. Brainstorming Continued--Webquesting an Idea 4. Students Concept Map Areas of Interest 5. Using the Science Senior Seminar Literature Library 6. Solidifying the Hypothesis 7. Writing the Literature Review and Word Splash for Project Ideas 8. Literature for the Literature Review 9. Prediction of the Data Sets 10. Students Generate Progress Reports 11. Consulting Science Writing Partnerships 12. Peer Review of Literature Reviews 13. Good-Data Exercises #1--Modeling Figure Design and Analysis 14. Good-Data Exercises #2--Excel and Graphing CENTRAL GOAL: Literature reviews are due by the end of this week. 15. How To Assemble the Final Paper: Discovery of Life on Mars? 16. Reserve Lesson (if time allows): An Analysis of a Doctoral Thesis (or, A Research Paper of Common Interest) 17. PowerPoint and the Science Senior Seminar PowerPoint Template 18. Peer Review of Final Papers CENTRAL GOAL: All students will have one complete data set in their manuscript. 19. The MRI Talk (an opportunity for a guest lecture). 20. Day for Working on PowerPoint Files 21. PowerPoint Final Day, and Presentation Tips CENTRAL GOAL: All students should have made substantial progress on their PowerPoint presentations, which should appear nearly ready for presentation. 22. In-class presentations 23. …