Your video does an excellent job of demonstrating how effective it is to connect youth from different communities to each other through outdoor experiences and hands-on science.

 

Thank you so much for your comment Perrin! As you saw on the video, one of the students put it this way: "science is a common language". It was beautiful to see students from these different communities work together towards a common goal.

Thank you Perrin. I am so lucky to work with a group of wonderful colleagues who seek out the best opportunities for their students. Your kind words are appreciated!

I really enjoyed the video.  Hearing from the student voices about the value of collaboration was dynamic.  Are they moving these symposia virtually this year?  How are the students selected to participate?

Hi Margaret! The GLOBE Program has an International Virtual Science Symposia (IVSS) that GLOBE students can enter and receive feedback from judges. Given similar timing, we have focused on in-person events instead. We feel strongly that we cannot replace the experience of being at the SRS and meeting STEM professionals and other students in-person - to have a conversation, especially when the events are so short (1-2 days). However, we knew that some students had already worked very hard on projects for the 2020 SRS and some teachers were able to continue to support project development virtually so we are asking those able, to upload their projects for reviewer comments. We've posted a FAQ with details about this here. The GLOBE Program is a mosaic of teachers, STEM professionals and Partners across the country serving different communities and students. The leadership team was disappointed that we had to cancel our events. Adding to that, we have found that offering this virtual option truly highlights inequities because so many communities of students and teachers do not have the resources they need to participate. We knew that many would not be able to participate because of the burden of the switch to virtual learning, but when we polled the teachers about this option, the stark reality was clear.

All GLOBE students in 5th-12th grade can participate. We may have had to close registration early or limit the number of students from schools in some locations where there is a space issue but so far, that has only happened in a couple cases over the years (and it was a limit of 5 students/school). Teachers often have their own ways of selecting students (this article has some examples of that) and sometimes GLOBE Partners in a certain state or area will hold their own local SRS events to choose their representatives (GLOBE Partners may fund some teams to attend). Teachers can apply for funding support. Those are awarded to school teams in high-need districts, a large number of ELL, and teachers who are supporting student research in the classroom for the first time and never attended a science fair/symposium with students.

Margaret, 

I am glad to hear that you enjoyed viewing our video and thank-you for taking the time to reach out to us with your questions. This year students have been invited to share their projects online for peer review. We will certainly miss the opportunity to connect in-person, but we are still providing a way to celebrate the amazing work that the students have been doing. Each year students collecting GLOBE data for their research are all invited to attend the GLOBE SRS within their region. 

Thank-you Janelle, we are very excited about all of the amazing things that have developed from the GLOBE Student Research Symposium. I was very humbled to have the opportunity to be a part of the SRS last year and have the chance to see the way the students interacted with each other. 

It is an absolutely transformative experience for the students. This is why building the foundation for students doing this kind of work has become one of the key components in our own project. 

Hi Marcy! Thank you for adding in this comment about engaging pre-service teachers and STEM majors. You mentioned how it was nice for them to interact with students and teachers but I also want to point out that it gave GLOBE students an opportunity to interact with college students who are close to their age. These kinds of interactions have a positive impact as well.

Hello Preeti, thank you for your questions. GLOBE has a large network of Partnering organizations in the United States (universities, science centers, non-profits). Partners work to support their local GLOBE students and teachers through professional development, classroom visits and connections and advice. GLOBE Partners play a huge roll in the recruitment effort, and thus many teachers that attend are already connected to a mentor (for those that are not, we connect them to a local Partner when they register for the event). We also recruit teams through the GLOBE website, a regular email listserve and social outlets. 

The time duration of student research varies widely based on what research is being conducted as well as time constraints in the classroom. Some teams project span the whole year (or multiple years) and some only a few weeks. 

And yes, anyone in grades 5-12 who conducts GLOBE research is welcome at the SRS! There is travel funding support, through an application process, for student/teacher teams coming from underserved and underrepresented communities.

GLOBE also has many scientists who work with and mentor students in certain protocol areas. For those teams searching for an expert, we have the GLOBE International STEM Network (GISN).

Hi Preeti,  

I can answer your questions from the perspective of one of the GLOBE Partnerships, the Iowa Academy of Science. 

Can you provide some details on the logistics of how students are recruited and matched to a team with scientists etc?  Our students and teachers self select which protocols to collect data and their own scientific questions and projects.  In our PD workshops with teachers we try to focus on selecting projects that connect to standards and that have meaning for the students and/or community.  For example, this year we are working with 14 secondary educators across the state and their students to conduct research about local air and water quality (through an EPA grant).  The projects are very different from school to school.  One school is working with local farmers to determine the air quality inside hog confinement buildings and trying to determine the distance that affects can be measured downwind, others are doing water quality monitoring of local watersheds, etc.  Each team knows that they have a lot of resources available on the GLOBE website and that our Iowa team can connect them with appropriate local scientists (co-workshop facilitators are University of Northern Iowa Water Quality and Meteorology/Air quality Faculty).  For this workshop, we also brought in Iowa DNR, city, and industry air and water quality scientists to meet with our educators and offer on-going support.

Also, what is the time duration of the research?   School GLOBE implementation projects range from a few days to a decade or more.  Some schools change projects almost every year, others have created ways for one class to pass on their knowledge and data to the next class.  Sometimes a school has long term data in one proptocol area but a new class of students is interested in something else and some educators are able to find ways to support this.  

Does everyone who does research get to go to the symposia?  No, we have had almost annual SRS type events in Iowa with around 12-30 participating educators annually for more than a decade and still this year was the FIRST year that 2 of our Iowa teams would have gone to the regional (not because they wouldn't have been selected, we have had a very difficult time getting teachers to apply to SRS).  For our state event, our project usually pays for 1 teacher, 1 administrator, and up to 5 students to come and present.  Usually 3 or 4 of the schools pay travel/lunch for additional students (anywhere from 3-4 to 60 or more students) to attend.  We also invite all past participating schools and usually about 1/3 to 1/2 of total event participation is by unfunded past participants.  Sometimes I think that the availability of this local event is a part of why our schools don't apply to the regional or global.

Hope this helps.

This project began with a conference proposal to NSF. The GLOBE Student Research Symposia concept was a way to bring together GLOBE Partners, students, teachers and STEM professionals to model attendance at a professional conference for all these different groups, along with networking between them. The funding plan was to pilot the model and if successful, find it continued support. An annual series of student events are difficult to fund sustainably with conference or research dollars. Each year we hope that we can, at a minimum, support the events themselves but in order to meet the primary goal of supporting students from under-resourced and under-served schools, our priority is for participant support (per diem, lodging, mileage, airfare, car rental, etc.) for any GLOBE team that needs it. NASA, which also funds the GLOBE Program, is very supportive of this project and was able to support Year 3 and most of year 4. At that point, YLACES, a non-profit (which provides equipment grants for teachers around the world), with a mission closely aligned with these events, offered to support them too. YLACES is a true partner with the leadership team and is working to build further financial support, create a sustainable annual series of events, increase funding support for participants and grow the SRS. Along the way, other GLOBE Partnerships have written in travel and registration support for GLOBE teachers and teams in their grant proposals and the hosts of the regional SRS have been able to find small pockets of local funding or negotiate reduced rates so that we run the events as efficiently as possible. I realize that this is a very long answer to your question but it is really amazing how passionate the U.S. GLOBE Partners and our funders are about making these happen. We could not do it without all these contributions and keeping them funded is always on our minds, particularly when they have such a positive impact on students.

Jennifer, thank you for clarifying the funding model!  Indeed, securing sustained funding for travel is so difficult yet so critical in the case of your project.  Furthermore, establishing support to keep the programs in place after the run of the seed grants is even more challenging.  It seems like you are on the right track – distributed funding model based on increased visibility and celebrating the prominence and impact of the work.  The powerful stories and experiences, like the ones that you share here, can only help.

In that sense, I also noticed the clever use of the moving picture medium in video.  Introducing a number of individuals/characters with diverse backgrounds, following them throughout the project to highlight their evolving trajectory and personal journey…  Well done!  Consider pulling the curtain back on that part of the project – I am tempted to think what would the “director’s cut” of these presentations, videos and short films look and sound like. 

Thank you for noticing how we followed those particular students throughout the experience. We have two stories that share similar experiences in print - from the mentor scientist and then from the teacher (both are in this video) side.

You bring up an really nice point about pulling the curtain back. We were limited to three minutes for the Showcase but we have lots more footage to sift through and put together. One of our casual observations has been that the student 'talk' in the videos over the last few years has changed over time -  from a novel experience to one that is more meaningful when they return the next year. It is something that we hope to explore more in the future. We have another video about the Pacific SRS and two more will be out soon highlighting the Southwest SRS and then the whole series. After that, who knows what we will find as we keep sifting!

Nickolay, If you follow the GLOBE twitter/instagram/fb accounts during the SRS season, video footage from all of the regional events is released as it is taken.  Some is live and some is by the student's themselves.  

These would not be a success without the support and assistance from GLOBE Partners like you Sherry! You hosted a wonderful 2016 Southeast Student Research Symposium the very first year in Mississippi and continue to be an integral part of the leadership team! Thank you!

I love the term "flipped classroom", that is a wonderful way to describe the possibilities that come from implementing GLOBE within the classroom. The experiences that students are able to have within the process of doing GLOBE are unlike anything that is possible "within the walls" of a regular classroom setting. As I talk with students during the SRS about their research, I hear so much more from them than they could have ever learned within the pages of a textbook. They learn best by "doing", learning about their environment as they experience it for themselves. Thank-you for taking the time to view our video and share your thoughts. 

The GLOBE SRS activities are informed by the literature on self-efficacy, specifically for science practices, and by the Next Generation Science Standards. The outcome measures we use for program evaluation are aligned with this literature as well (summary report). However, we implement research-based promising practices from many different areas; we’ve been responsive to teachers’ and students’ needs as it has evolved, and we welcome partnering with others who would like to investigate innovative aspects of the program. There are many different ways that teachers and students prepare for the SRS. For example, some student teams work with STEM mentors, including NASA scientists. GLOBE Partners across the country assist teachers with professional learning opportunities and classroom support for conducting GLOBE research projects with students leading up to the events. The professional learning opportunities take different forms and use different approaches. In some cases, the GLOBE Partners are grant-funded to provide and/or conduct research on teacher professional development. Two of these Partners have videos in the Showcase (Metropolitan State University Denver Partnership & GLOBE Mission EARTH involving several Partnerships). In addition, GLOBE offers webinars (specific SRS and general Watercoolers) that are linked to resources, “office hours,” teacher blogs and a Teacher Hotline staffed by experienced SRS teachers.

At the SRS events, we invite reviewers and keynote speakers that look like and come from the same communities that the students are from (promising practices in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion [DEI] area). We support students in learning about the peer review process before they present to STEM professionals and encourage everyone to have conversations about their research (science communication), rather than planning for a presentation followed by questions. Our reviewer materials do not look like judging forms and ask for specific feedback rather than a grade, as we emphasize 21st Century Skills. For links to these resources, our SRS page is the place to start.

If you would like more information about the evaluation of the SRS as a program, please reach out and we (myself and Dr. Eleanor Jaffee, our evaluator) would be more than happy to discuss it further.

Hi Martin! Here is a link to the evaluation summary. Please let me know if you have any questions for me or our evaluator.

The GLOBE Observer App is a mechanism for guided data collection and entry for a select number of GLOBE protocols (clouds, land cover, mosquitos, tree height). The data can be entered by anyone through this app, once they are registered as a GLOBE citizen scientist. GLOBE teachers/students can use their GLOBE log-in to enter the data and it will show up under their school with any data they have entered. The GLOBE data entry app is for GLOBE teachers/students and includes the rest of the protocols (hydrology, soil moisture & characterization, vegetation carbon measurements, etc.). We also have online and email data entry mechanisms for entering GLOBE data. Teachers like to use GLOBE Observer because it has a very student (and public) friendly interface but many projects (water quality, aerosols, carbon cycle) are based around these other measurements that are not included in GLOBE Observer. In that case, one of the other data entry mechanisms is the better choice. The Student Research Symposia is independent of the mechanism that students use to enter data. As long as student projects use data from the GLOBE database, downloading and analyzing data themselves or using the visualization tool, they will be reviewed.   

Thank you Holly for your really important question about how we form groups and select research topics.  At Stamford High School, I thought this was so important to the success of the GLOBE program that I remember seeking the advice of other teachers on how best to form groups.  The consensus was to allow friends to self select with the rationale that these students would be more likely to stay together and complete their projects.  This was sound advice as I have watched friendships grow over the years and have not had a group disband.  This applies to the students who work with me above and beyond their classwork.  They meet with me before, during, and after school and occasionally on weekends while they collect their data on a daily basis.  As for groups in the classroom, I use flexible grouping and pair high and lower functioning students to foster leadership skills and encourage participation in the GLOBE activities.

When it comes to selecting a research topic, I like to hold meetings with groups of students to model collaboration.  The students are limited to research that involves the data they collect themselves using equipment that we borrow from NASA Langley Research Center.  The more say the students have in selecting the topic, the more buy in and enthusiasm they have in working on their research.  When we have difficulty with equipment or questions about using data, the wonderful staff at NASA Langley has been there to support our students.  My only agenda during meetings to select a topic is to look for opportunities to suggest databases that students can use in their research.  For example, I often encourage them to use https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/ and teach them how to access satellite data.  These are skills I hope students will use when they are doing their own research in college.

I hope this information is helpful and thank you for your kind works about our video.

Thanks for this thorough reply, Sue-- it definitely answers my question and is super helpful!

Hi Holly,

My name is Rick Sharpe and I agree with Sue and I allow students to select their own partners as well. However I approach research topics  a bit differently. I teach several co-taught classes in Environmental Science and I have found allowing students to choose from 2- 3 research topics has worked best for us. We have one hydrology project that consists of studying water quality of a local stream that flows through our most popular city parks. This stream has been impacted by raw sewage spills and diesel fuel spills, so this is a long term study that student perform each year. We also offer research topics concerning climate change and the Urban Heat Island Effect using Surface Temperatures, Meteorology, and Aerosols data. This allows us to track changes over time and to offer more options to students for selecting a research topic.We have also had great support from NASA Langley and from NASA IV & V in Fairmont, WV. GLOBE is a critical part of our curriculum and has allowed our students to collaborate with NASA scientists and to experience STEM that is relevant to their lives.  

Hi Rick,

I'll comment on student selection and project selection too.  It varies drastically by teacher and even class.  I've worked with teachers that engage their entire class or even an entire grade level in a single project together (what is the water quality of the stream that passes our school?, when will hummingbirds arrive this spring?, how will this year's pattern of greendown of our class tree vary compared to previous years?).  Other teachers break the students into teams (by selection or choice) but all groups must work in the same protocol area.  I've even worked with a couple of teachers that had every single student select and design their own project using any protocol they wanted (this is the strategy I would rarely advise, it leads to educator burn out!)  One school I worked with gave every grade a different project and an annual duty, all related to the creation and then maintenance of the school's wetland.  Three of the grades did GLOBE projects, 4th or 5th started a Naturemapping Species Diversity study 2 years before the wetland went in and continued it into year 5 instead of GLOBE. 

In PD, we focus on integrating the projects into the curriculum through connections to standards, student interests, and community issues.  We also use the 5 Essential Features of Inquiry and their Variations handout to discuss reasons why a teacher might choose to give students more or less choice of their project (in order to keep the project feasible given the time and materials available; because the students are already familiar with the topic or it is completely new to them; because the student's math skills may or may not be sufficient to analyze the data collected, etc.)

-Marcy Seavey, STEM Coordinator, University of Northern Iowa and GLOBE Trainer

 

I'll add one more resource. We asked teachers how they chose groups and turned it into a news story! Getting ready for the SRS: How to develop and choose a team of students to attend the GLOBE regional SRS.

 

Hi Andrew,

I don't know that this was intentional but the number of women scientists and leaders in GLOBE definitely plays a role in encouraging girls.  I know that Dr. Lynn Chambers inspired a group of 5 girls in one of our middle schools to start a "Cloud Club" after she did a video conference with them way back in the early 2000s.  Two of those girls continued their research into high school even thought they no longer had a GLOBE teacher, coming in after school to meet with the science teacher on the other team in order to do their project. 

Not only are their many women represented on the science teams but I am pretty sure that women outnumber men on the partnership teams.  This means that in the US, our teachers and students are more likely to interact with more women than men.  

And I also think that our GLOBE tradition of collecting data together at most of our gatherings gives all of those present an excellent example of men and women working together collaboratively.  As important as it is for girls to have female role-models, they also need to see that male STEM professionals will welcome and support them.  When you look at our teams, you see men and women of different backgrounds working together for science and education.

It would be wonderful to look into this formally. 

Marcy brings up some excellent points about how we have many female scientists and leaders in GLOBE and that we encourage collaboration around the stereotypes that exist. Everyone is a scientist in GLOBE - and they may or may not look like you or come from the same place. We extend that idea to the Symposia but also strive to invite keynotes and STEM professionals that look like the students or come from the same background. We feel that it is important that students see themselves in the STEM professionals that they interact with. The leadership team is constantly working to improve on representation and have a couple strategies that we will be implementing in the next year.

Thank you Leigh! I look forward to working with you to support more teams from Maine participating next year.

John, you are being humble! You contributed to the largest spike in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic SRS participation when you hosted at Palmyra Cove Nature Park in 2017. Thank you for helping to make the SRS successful by supporting teachers in your region.

Thank you Mariana. I agree completely - both in that we need to do something and that I do not know the answer. Hopefully we can turn this into an opportunity.

Thank you Sue. We so appreciate your contributions to the GLOBE community.

I want to echo Sue Dougherty's comments. I have been teaching Environmental Science for ten years and GLOBE has been the most important part of my curriculum. We are a Title 1 school and GLOBE has allowed my students to travel, work with NASA scientists, conduct research, collect valuable environmental data, and to work to correct a serious environmental issue in our city. Thanks to everyone who works to make GLOBE the important science education tool it is, and has allowed me to become a much better teacher than I would otherwise have been.