Weekly summaries of “Doing Science: from Start to Finish”
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Week 1 (Oct 3rd, 2016): Dr. Rivera-Mariani, the students, Physics Teacher, and the Librarian participated of the first meeting. In this meeting, we got to know each other: students presented themselves as well as Dr. Rivera-Mariani, Mrs. Noble, Ms. Pérez, and the school’s principal. Students also were assigned their first homework: to submit their workshop’s expectations find them here. Through a text-mining algorithm developed by Dr. Rivera-Mariani, we’ll familiarize with the students’ expectations and at the same time help to adapt the workshop’s goals. These expectations are also linked to a homework 2, which was assigned to the students during week 2 (October 24th, 2016). Find week 1 presentation here.
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Week 2 (Oct 24th, 2016): The students were presented the learning goals of the workshop (find them above), and differentiated between the linear and simple scientific method and the real scientific method used in the scientific community. Students also began to understand and synthesize the first three phases of the scientific method: the question, the background research, and the hypothesis. Homework 2 was assigned (to develop a hypothesis), which will be discussed in week 3. Find week 2 presentation here.
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Week 3 (Oct 31st, 2016): The students practiced applicating the criteria for good scientific questions, purpose, and hypothesis: being specific, being testable, and being falsifiable (in the case of the hypothesis). The students also evaluated if a question, “How long does it take to go through each room of the Thomas Armstrong high school without exiting from the same door entered”, can be examined through a question or hypothesis. As a final exercise, students evalauted if the following hypothesis meets the criteria of a good hypothesis for the question “What are the most frequent words among the students expectations’ of the Doing Science workshop?”: The students expectations’ of the Doing Scinece workshop will contain words that are in the title of the workshop. The students then evaluated if the approach used by Dr. Rivera-Mariani to test the hypothesis meets all the criteria. Find week 3 presentation here.
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Week 4 (Nov 14th, 2016): In this meeting, the students reviewed the example workflow of the scientific method presented by Dr. Rivera-Mariani in the previous meeting. Because from the this scientific method workflow the results partially aligned with the hypothesis, students practiced elaborating new questions and hypotheses. Students also were presented some questions for them to evalaute which of them meet the criteria of 1) being specific, and 2) being testable. From the questions that meet the criteria, students elaborated hypotheses using only the words by which the questions were written. Using two algorithms elaborated by Dr. Rivera-Mariani, one for 1st version of the hypotheses and the other for the 2nd version, the results obtained were used for the students to evaluate if the results align, partially align, or do not align at all to the following hypothesis: Students hypothesis #1 vs hypothesis #2 will share common words. Students also evaluated the following hypothesis: Students’ hypothesis 1 will have higher number of letters than hypothesis 2. A dot-plot graph was presented to the students for them to evaluate if the results align, partially aligned, or don’t align at all. Find week 4 presentation here.
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Week 5 (Nov 28th, 2016): In this workshop session, students reviewed the scientific method epicycles covered in previous workshop’s sessions, and began to familiarize with the workflow of data analysis. The main categories in which variables are grouped (independent vs dependent), as well as the sub-categories (continuous, categorical) were discussed. Students provided features that characterize independent and dependent variables, and practiced inferring the categories (continuous, categorical nominal, categorical binary, categorical ordinal) of variables from example datasets. These example datasets included data corresponding from a course taught by Dr. Rivera-Mariani and meteorlogical data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administratino (NOAA). Find week 5 presentation here.