Student Scientist Partnerships and Data Quality

Abstract

The Student Scientist Partnership introduces students to hands-on, minds-on science and provides them an opportunity to participate in a program that is real and important, and also introduces the student to the rigor of science through the focus on data quality. The student has the opportunity to experience and learn the Scientific Method, not just memorize it, to stimulate creative thinking, inquiry based learning, and many other key components of the educational objectives. The scientist should provide skill appropriate scientific inquiry tools that the student uses to help them improve the quality of their data and to understand the science concept being addressed. By making the measurements suggested, and establishing the quality of their data, the student begins the journey of understanding scientific research. The scientist not only uses the student-generated data in their on-going research activities, but also provides higher level information products back to the student. Ultimately, it must be clearly remembered that there are two important but quite different objectives for both the student and the scientist. For the student, the primary objective is the generation of the knowledge of science, while, for the research scientist, the primary objective is the generation of scientific knowledge.