Hi Kirstin, thanks so much for your comment! Our goals for MindHive are two-fold: first, we want students to have an authentic research experience and second, we would like for these research experiences to be contributions to the overall scientific community. After students formulate their own research questions and design their studies after participating in scientist-initiated studies, their studies are closely reviewed by the MindHive team before students go on to collect their own data from peers in their own class as well as across schools. Data and insights from these student projects help researchers identify and formulate questions that are yet to be investigated, made apparent through this citizen science process.

With respect to how student work is incorporated back into the science: building on last year’s studies, we at NYU developed the study https://mindhive.science/studies/covid, asking exactly the questions that students were interested in (e.g., “Does personality affect your experience in remote learning?”). We’re currently in the process of collecting and analyzing the data.

About guiding students in their own research and analytical skills, we try to scaffold iterative research skills in the following ways: Every scientist-initiated study on MindHive is paired with a lesson around research design and reasoning, as well as embedded assessments where students are asked to reflect on possible follow-up questions. They note these questions in their journal and then by the time they get to designing their own study, the first step in the proposal process is “Brainstorming” where they collect all their questions and ideas that have come up throughout the curriculum thus far. In addition, the platform encourages students to ‘clone’ research projects: they can literally create copies of existing research studies and . Finally, we have built in a lot of tasks and surveys that students can mix and match together using a block-based design to ask new questions using ‘old’ tasks.

Hi Sarah! Thanks so much for watching our video and commenting. Yes, our student initiated  studies -- great question. Before students embark on this journey of creating their own studies, we implement  a curriculum (the length of which varies slightly across classes depending on how much time teachers have) in their classes that includes materials on how to formulate questions about human behavior that are generalizable, fast vs. rigorous science, what makes good experimental design, etc. Students also learn about and participate in several scientist-initiated studies on the platform before creating their own, which allows them to observe what kinds of questions can be asked, and how these questions can be testable using different kinds of tasks and surveys. We are currently building in a component that allows students to quickly analyze, visualize, and interpret their data as well.

hi Rosio,
Thanks so much for your kind words and great question! We don't the answer to it yet, as we are unfortunately only just now starting to work on data analysis and communication... to be continued.

hi Rachael,

really happy to know you liked this! we are in the middle of our first data collection round for Brownsville so we don't have any specific answer for you yet in terms of outcomes. 
During the process of development, a highlight was definitely working with community representatives in learning what THEY thought was important to their community. A challenge was recruitment, especially since in-person recruitment was important. 
here's the link to the NGO we're working with: https://www.publicsentiment.org/brownsville/

thanks for the encouraging remarks! 

i just saw your project: love it! 

hi Kirstin,
We are actually working with an AP bio teacher as well as a molecular biology teacher. Happy to discuss more if you like! suzanne.dikker@nyu.edu

thank you :)