Secrets of Successful Science Projects
📝 Abstract
Over the past several years, the authors have served as teachers, qualified scientists, mentors, and/or parents on dozens of science projects. These projects ranged from elementary school projects that can be completed in a weekend to high school and college freshmen projects that take a semester or year to complete and yield published scholarly papers and/or compete at the highest national and international levels. This article describes what we have observed to be important to success.
💡 Analysis
Over the past several years, the authors have served as teachers, qualified scientists, mentors, and/or parents on dozens of science projects. These projects ranged from elementary school projects that can be completed in a weekend to high school and college freshmen projects that take a semester or year to complete and yield published scholarly papers and/or compete at the highest national and international levels. This article describes what we have observed to be important to success.
📄 Content
Secrets of Successful Science Projects
Amy Courtney and Michael Courtney
Michael_Courtney@alum.mit.edu
Amy_Courtney@post.harvard.edu
Abstract
Over the past several years, the authors have served as teachers, qualified scientists, mentors, and/or
parents on dozens of science projects. These projects ranged from elementary school projects that
can be completed in a weekend to high school and college freshmen projects that take a semester or
year to complete and yield published scholarly papers and/or compete at the highest national and
international levels. This article describes what we have observed to be important to success.
Keywords: Science fair, Science project, ISEF, Broadcom MASTERS, SJWP, Google Science Fair,
JSHS
Introduction
The need or desire for a student to complete a science project can be a source of both anxiety and
opportunity. (Bochinski, 1996) A well-executed science project builds good skills in science and math,
project planning, logical thinking, setting and keeping milestones, and can strengthen preparation for
college and beyond. (Bochinski, 1996) A poorly-executed science project can be a source of stress
and disappointment. (Grote, 1995) Over the past decade, we have mentored dozens of science
projects completed by students ranging from middle school to freshmen in college. Dozens of projects
have been published as scholarly papers, and we’ve never had a project fail to place in a regional
science fair. Several students have won all-expense paid trips to national and international
competitions, and over 70% of projects competing in state science fairs won 1st place in their category,
with over 90% placing 1st or 2nd in category.
The early sections of this paper (up through the sections discussing the hypothesis) can be
productively applied to all levels of projects with a wide range of efforts and goals from the weekend
project trying only to earn a good grade to projects taking a full year and aspiring to win at the highest
levels. The later sections of the paper are geared more toward projects hoping to perform well at the
state level and beyond and yield results that are suitable for publication.
We observe that the best outcomes tend to occur when students are given the option to participate or
refrain in different competitions. In other words, where there might often be value in requiring student
research for evaluation in an educational context, a combination of the subjective nature of judging,
student anxiety, and other factors makes it counterproductive to force competition in students who are
reluctant. “Success” must be defined in terms of good science and research rather than in outcomes
in subjective competitive events. (Czerniak, 1996; also see Yasar, 2006) Our view is that it is the
research experience, rather than the competition, that produces positive outcomes for the student.
(But see also Sahin, 2013 for a different view.)
Identify the Goal and Desired Venue
ISEF, i-SWEEEP, Broadcom Masters, Google Science Fair, Stockholm Junior Water Prize, Young
Naturalist Awards, school science fairs, Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, and others all
provide opportunities for student science projects to receive feedback and be judged in competitive
environments. Numerous publication opportunities provide further opportunities for high quality
projects to receive feedback from scientists and for good papers to take a permanent place in the
scholarly literature. Most students begin with a school or regional science fair that is either ISEF
affiliated or feeds into an ISEF-affiliated or Broadcom Masters-affiliated fair, but there are many other
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options.
Projects assigned by schools usually define the goals and venue, which also determines the rules for
participation. However, projects pursued independently of school assignments should include due
consideration of the goals, with an appropriate venue selected accordingly. All of the venues
mentioned above have corresponding web sites, and many have national and regional or state web
sites and points of contact to help get you started.
Tight Correspondence Between Hypothesis and Method
The most important feature of a project for success in most competitions, symposia, and publication
venues is a tight correspondence between a scientific hypothesis and the experimental method
chosen to test the hypothesis. No matter how interesting a hypothesis may be, if a method cannot be
developed and executed by the student to adequately test the stated hypothesis, the project will not be
very good, and other hypotheses should be considered.
This overriding feature is so important that students we mentor often take weeks or months
brainstorming, considering, and rejecting a wide array of possible hypotheses for consideration. There
is a pretty good correlation between project success, and the number of hypothese
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