MOVING A SUMMER RESEARCH PROGRAM ONLINE: CHALLENGES, TRIUMPHS, AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS FOR CREATING AN AUTHENTIC VIRTUAL RESEARCH EXPERIENCE IN WATER RESEARCH

The CoVID19 pandemic shifted our summer research program for high school students online. The initial plan was for several rising juniors and seniors and two teachers from The Hockaday School in Dallas, TX to have a residential experience at Auburn University for roughly two weeks in July 2020. The main goal was for the students to learn skills and techniques in water research and apply them in an independent research project. As institutions in the US moved to distance-learning in spring of 2020, the residential piece of the program was unrealistic. Instead of canceling the program, we moved to an online format. The major obstacle to moving online was finding creative ways for the students to collect and analyze data at home. We borrowed techniques from citizen science programs and sent each student a water quality testing kit, which included pipets, petri dishes, and pre-treated gel to enumerate E. Coli in water samples. We met as a group three times a week to discuss the natural and urban water cycles, source of pollution in waterbodies, and sampling protocols. Each student developed an independent hypothesis around the same research question, “What drives E. Coli concentrations in your local water body?” Students designed sampling schemes, created at-home incubators, and documented their progress. This talk will focus on the challenges both the students and the organizers faced in coordinating the effort, as well as samples of the student outcomes (~2-minute videos) and a summary of the metacognitive reflection survey the students completed after the program. Considering face-to-face learning is likely restricted in the coming academic terms, our model for a virtual research experience can be adapted to any high school and undergraduate experience designed to promote experimental learning.