4 Planning a Network Science Project
Planning a Network Science project involves a number of separate but related tasks. We discuss the tasks that most projects will face: Staffing, Organizing the participants, Planning the Schedule, Technology Planning, Curricular Planning, including defining the learning goals and activities and designing the
curriculum, and, finally, Testing the Curriculum Design.
Although there is no "typical" project, it is useful, nonetheless, to look at the staff that most projects will find necessary. We have conceptualized the functions of the staff under specific "roles" described below. Do not assume, however, that it is necessary to have a separate staff person for each role. In any particular project one person will often carry out more than one role. So, even though it may appear that a large staff is needed to run a project, that is not true. In a small project one person might carry out many roles at different times and certain roles might be filled on a part-time basis.
The Project Director has overall responsibility for project
vision, direction, planning, and implementation; assembles
the staff; develops the budget; oversees the work of the
project specialists; monitors attainment of project goals.
The Curriculum Designer conceptualizes and organizes the learning activities of the project and plans the sequence of activities, investigations, and information exchanges that constitute the core of the project.
He or she also develops a realistic and flexible schedule for project activities,
writes the curriculum guide for teachers, prepares lab sheets and investigation
guides for students, plans data collection methods, creates data tables, and
plans data analysis activities using sorting, statistics, graphing, and mapping
tools.
The Curriculum Designer thoroughly understands the capabilities and limitations
of the Alice Network Software, or whatever software is being used, including
the close connections between the data table, the core science investigations,
and the kinds of analyses that can be carried out with the data from a
particular data table.
The Science Content Specialist thoroughly understands the scientific content of the project and serves as a resource to the Curriculum Designer as the project is being developed.
The On-Line Scientist serves as an on-line mentor for students and senior colleague for teachers during the project, responds to student and teacher questions, poses questions and hypotheses, offers interpretations, and suggests implications and relations to a larger body of scientific work or to social issues. He or she promotes discussion and investigation, assists students with the design of their own research, and provides additional scientific background that teachers may need.
The Teacher Developer provides training for teachers in the project's curriculum and in the use of the Alice Network Software.
The Network Coordinator monitors messages and data exchanged among the participants on the network while the project is underway, troubleshoots non-technical problems that arise, and monitors data submissions and other scheduled
exchanges in relation to the project schedule.
The Forum Moderator acts as the on-line host for the teacher discussion forum, monitors messages posted to the forum, stimulates discussion among the participating teachers, and provides social support for the forum. The moderator may be one of the participating teachers, but prior experience with electronic discussion is important.
The Technical Coordinator coordinates all aspects of the project's technology. This includes distribution and installation of the Alice Network Software on classroom computers, setting up access to the telecommunications network, and reviewing the setup of the Alice data tables and the data sharing server. The Technical Coordinator ensures that teachers have access to modems, computers, and phone lines in their schools, serves as local support on technical issues for the curriculum designer and others, and is the primary liaison to TERC technical staff.
Technical Support answers participants' day-to-day technical questions regarding the
software, computer, modem, or network whether by phone, e-mail, or other means. TERC provides 800-number technical support for some projects; other projects provide
their own technical support.
Curriculum Support provides ongoing support on curriculum questions to participants during the duration of the project and answer questions by phone, e-mail, or other means.
The Database Specialist provides liaison between the project and the TERC staff managing the data sharing server, assists with the preparation of project data tables for the data sharing server, tests data sharing, understands the operation of the database, coordinates with the project as necessary, and requests automated reports
from the data sharing server that go to the project director, network coordinator, and/or forum moderator.
Students benefit enormously when they exchange their ideas, hypotheses, questions, and data with other students. However, it is often difficult and somewhat overwhelming for students to form relationships with a large number of schools or individuals during the time span of a typical project. For this reason, we suggest that you organize the classes in your project into subgroups, or teams consisting of, perhaps, six to ten classes.
Scheduling
Developing a realistic schedule of project activities is critical. In laying out the schedule, provide enough flexibility to accommodate unexpected changes in school schedules, and to allow for individual variations in the amount of time teachers need to spend on various activities. Projects that have tight schedules are sailing into troubled waters. It is not possible to overplan the schedule of a project. Extra attention to details ahead of time will assure a smoothly running project in the end. Begin by drawing up a list of every activity the students and teachers will engage in. Here is a typical set of activities, followed by comments.
- Initial introduction of the project
- Learning the software
- Letter exchanges: Consider allowing time for multiple exchanges so that
students can establish personal relationships with other students in the
project.
- Field work: Allow time to arrange transportation and necessary permissions.
- Lab work: This is more predictable because it tends to be done under
controlled conditions in the school.
- Data collection: This may take longer in certain sites if weather conditions
are unfavorable or other local factors intervene.
- Preparing the data before submitting: Allow time for students to think about
their local data and decide what to share with the other classes.
- Data submittal: Allow time for mistakes and problems. This is one of the
activities that is most likely to have problems.
- Data retrieval: Do not expect data sharing to operate on a tight schedule.
Some sites will submit data late so allow time between the date for the last
data submittal and data retrieval.
- Data analysis, interpretation, and discussion of the network data: It will
take some time for teachers to organize the data for use in the classroom.
- Reporting the results: Allow enough time for students to prepare reports on
their findings.
When you have listed all the project activities, record the number of class
periods required for each activity. Add free days into the schedule to allow
for sickness, special school programs that interfere with the schedule, snow
days, holidays you didn't know about, testing days, and other unforeseen events
that may disrupt the schedule. If the project involves schools in other parts
of the country or of the world, you may need to consider differences in weather
conditions, school schedules, time zones, and national holidays. You may need
to allow time for the shipment of project-related materials and for teachers to
review the materials and prepare for the project. Allow time for teachers to
upload and download files, print out mail that is received, and do other
time-consuming activities related to telecommunications. We have found that
the amount of time teachers need for telecommunications activities is usually under-estimated.
This is a general description of the major tasks involved in technology planning. These tasks, described in detail in Chapter 8, "Technology Planning," should be supervised by the Technical Coordinator.
- Prepare the Alice Network Software for the specific needs of your project.
- Obtain accounts for participants on one or more Internet point-of-entry computers (POEs) and install the necessary UNIX shell scripts and Perl scripts so that the Alice Network Software can communicate with the POEs.
- Arrange for TERC to set up the necessary data tables on the automated data
sharing server.
- Test the telecommunications and data sharing process.
Planning the curriculum for a telecommunications project is a complex task requiring attention to some special issues. The sections below provide guidance for the Curriculum
Designer.
At the beginning of your project planning process list the learning goals and activities of the project. This will help clarify what you want the project to achieve and how the planned activities will work toward that goal.
Design the Curriculum to Achieve the Goals
The goals that you define have implications for the relative emphasis you put on various activities and the percentage of project time that you devote to them. For
example, if you want students to improve their data analysis skills, you will build in relatively more time for working with data and learning how to use the analysis tools that the Alice Network Software provides. If you want students to become more capable with telecommunications, you will take pains to make sure that they have a chance to participate in the sending and receiving of data. If you want to develop a community of student scientists, then you may provide for frequent exchanges of letters and background information and create activities where students collaborate in the actual design of research projects. In summary, clarifying your goals at the outset will help you design activities that achieve them.
Articulate the Research Questions
Some projects are built around strong, clear research questions articulated by the curriculum designer. Other projects let the questions emerge from the minds of the students as the project unfolds. If you choose to follow the latter course, you will need to provide adequate time, perhaps more than expected, for students to discuss,
debate, and revise their ideas before a clear research agenda emerges. We assume that most of the time, the curriculum will present a clear set of research questions and research activities designed to investigate them. When this is the case, the purpose of the research should be crystal clear to the students and their teachers. The investigations they undertake and the data they collect and share should be directed toward helping to answer the research questions. To justify collaboration with other students, the research question should genuinely benefit from the sharing of data from dispersed data collection sites.
Create Student Investigations
Research requires data, and data are the result of investigations. In collaborative investigations, the data which students collect at their local sites are shared over the network with their fellow researchers. The curriculum designer must carefully plan these local investigations, making sure that teachers have the necessary background information to assist students in carrying them out, and ensuring that all necessary materials are available at each site.
Decide What Data Students Will Collect
The actual data which students collect depend upon the nature of the research question being investigated. For projects whose central activities involve data collection, sharing, and analysis, it is important to compile, early in the project planning process, a list of all the data that students will collect.
Decide How Students Will Collect and Record Data
The model of network science that informs this document involves the sharing over a network of ideas and data collected in geographically diverse sites. The way that this data is collected and shared can range from highly structured to unstructured. Structured data sharing uses a set of standard procedures and formats for collecting, recording, and sharing the data. In an open-ended structure students and teachers choose what data to collect and decide how to record and share it.
Most projects include data of both types.
- The Alice report writer (a simplified word processor) is ideal for
unstructured data, student lab notes, field notes, background information on
the study site, research questions, and design ideas.
- Alice data tables are an excellent way to organize and share structured data.
It is important to note that students can use the Alice Network Software's
graphing and mapping features only if the data are recorded in an Alice
data table. (This, in itself, is a powerful reason for standardizing the data
collection and recording procedures.)
The curriculum designer should create a sample data table during the initial stages of planning the curriculum. In this way the developer will see how the Alice Network Software structures the data that is placed in a table and
how different kinds of data allow different possibilities for student investigation. For example, each column of an Alice data table can contain data of only one kind: integer, real number, category, text, latitude, longitude, date, time, or formula. When setting up a data table you must identify each column as belonging to one of these nine types. By setting up a sample data table, the designer will think about the structure of the data early in the planning process.
As you set up a table and enter sample data, try to simulate what students
might plausibly do. Enter values that are too big or too small. Enter data that
has extra decimal points. Try entering data that is the wrong "type" for the
column, e.g., real number data in a column designed for integers, text data in
a category column, numerical data in a text field, etc. Observe what happens in
each case. Set up your own category for data, use shortcut keys, and notice how
test data can be structured.
Decide What Data to Share on the Network
Students may not necessarily share all the data they collect, nor in the exact form in which it is collected. For example, the project may have every student conduct
investigations and collect data individually or in small teams. However, it may be appropriate to share on the network only one set of data for the entire class because the shared data "represent" the local site for the other participants. In this case it will be necessary to provide a way for students to select a representative set of data for their location and transmit only that data on the network.
Analyzing and Interpreting Data
The Alice Network Software provides graphing, mapping, and statistical tools that can help students analyze and interpret data contained in an Alice data table. It is critical for the curriculum designer to become familiar with the graphing and mapping functions that the software provides so that appropriate use can be made of the available tools. In fact, while planning the curriculum, we recommend that the designer actually create and use a table of sample data, similar to that which the students will create. It is only in this way that the designer will see the full range of opportunities and limitations that the graphing and mapping features provide. When a data table is well-designed, students will be able to find multiple ways to analyze the data. Therefore, be sure to try several designs for the data table.
Sharing Ideas, Findings, and Questions
As students proceed in their investigations they may develop further research questions and ideas that did not occur to them at the beginning of their work. If you want students to share these ideas with fellow students on the network, then you should allow time for students to compose, transmit, and respond, not only once but with follow-up questions as well. You should also consider whether students will write letters to other individuals, other teams, other classes or the entire set of participants. (To provide for sending letters to groups or the entire project you should set up an address group in the project address book or arrange to have group addresses set up on one of the point-of-entry computers. See Chapter 8 for further details.)
Multiple Ways to Share Data
The sharing of data involves somewhat different considerations from the exchange of letters and ideas. There are, in fact, two ways that Alice Network Software helps users share data. In the first, all sites send their data directly to all other sites. In the second, all sites submit their data to the automated data sharing server where it is consolidated into one table, which any user can retrieve. For projects involving more than a very few sites, the second method is much better. Otherwise, each site's mailbox will receive a flood of individual data tables that must be consolidated by hand into a single table. We strongly recommend that projects make use of automated data sharing for consolidating their data.
Sending data directly to other sites does make sense, however, if some sites have established a special relationship and want to share some data, collected in identical data templates, only with each other. In that case, students can mail data tables to a specific individual address. The students who receive the data table can use the File Append command to consolidate the data into a single table. If data templates are not identical, data may have to be consolidated by manual entry.
Using Data Sharing
One of the most powerful features of the Alice Network Software and a chief motivation for using it is its ability to allow students in various locations to submit data to a central database and retrieve the consolidated data table
for analysis at their own site. Data sharing works equally
well whether all sites contribute and retrieve their data
over a period of weeks or whether they contribute data over a period of many years and retrieve data whenever they like. However, all users who submit and retrieve data must use the same data table format. The easiest way to ensure
the use of a common format is to distribute a "data table
template" to all users along with the Alice Network
Software. A data table matching the template is set up on
the data sharing server by TERC or project staff. This
process requires advance planning and testing to ensure
that data submissions and retrievals work as planned.
Student Research Reports
During the planning process it is useful to think about the kinds of reports or presentations that students may produce as the end result of their investigations. Will they use the writing, mapping, graphing, and statistical tools that the Alice Network Software provides? Will they work individually or in teams? Who will be the audience for the reports? Will reports be shared over the network?
Using On-Line Experts
The Alice Network Software makes it easy to provide on-line communication with a subject matter expert. If you plan to use scientists or experts as part of your project, you need
to consider a number of questions. Do you want
conversations with the scientist to be broadcast to all
participants or to be one-to-one conversations between one
classroom and the scientist? (You can set up the address
book to implement either structure.) You may also need to
consider how the scientist will be prepared to interact
with students, their schedule of availability, how much
effort they are willing to commit to the project, and how
you will insure that they provide good mentoring for
students, considering that they may not be accustomed to
working with students of this age.
After project staff have prepared the Alice Network Software with all the project-related files, the appropriate scripts, the participant and data sharing address books, set up the telecommunications network, and TERC or project staff have set up the necessary files for the project on the data sharing server, be sure to allow time to try out the curriculum design. Some person should go through all the activities you expect teachers to follow: transmit and receive files, fill out data tables, submit and retrieve data, create graphs and maps, etc. Testing should be carried out in close collaboration with TERC staff, who can advise on testing strategies and on solving problems that arise. Only when you have done this can you be confident that your project will work as planned.
Teachers want to give students opportunities for hands-on learning, personal growth, and responsible behavior. Telecommunications provides opportunities for all of these, but placing a telecommunications-enabled computer in the back of a classroom is no small matter. Students are suddenly connected to a world outside the classroom, a world that may be new and unfamiliar for both teacher and student. At the same time that telecommunications opens up new possibilities which teachers want to exploit, they must be mindful of potential dangers and opportunities for inappropriate use. The project will want to help teachers strike a fruitful balance. Although the Alice Network Software does not provide full Internet connectivity, it does allow the exchange of mail with anyone connected to the Internet and opens up communication possibilities that schools will want to consider carefully.
Passwords are one way to control access to the ability to telecommunicate. Typically, projects will set up accounts on the point-of-entry computers only for teachers and will
protect these accounts from unauthorized use through passwords given only to the teachers. However, password protection is not perfect and passwords cannot always be kept private. Unauthorized student use is always a possibility. For its own protection, the project needs to make clear that, in the end, teachers are the ones responsible for student use of classroom computers, including telecommunications using those computers.
Network conversations are different from the kinds of conversations students are used to having. E-mailed messages differ from face-to-face meetings, telephone conversations, or conventional mail in several important respects. For example, because e-mail messages lack the contextual clues of face-to-face and telephone interaction, misunderstanding is easier. Projects may want to include in the teacher training information about acceptable network
behavior, sometimes called "netiquette." A number of reference books include helpful information.
As a practical arrangement, projects will probably find it best to set up only one computer per classroom for telecommunications and to use additional computers, if available, for data analysis, letter composition, mapping, and so forth, but not for telecommunications. Because the software sends and receives files automatically, students do not spend time "on-line." Therefore, only one computer in the classroom needs to be set up for telecommunications.
Opportunities for New Research Methods
A formal plan for evaluation can help determine whether the project has achieved the goals set for it and provide a basis for improving the project if it is repeated. As several of the Testbed projects have demonstrated, telecommunications-based projects have unique opportunities to gather data for evaluation. For example, teachers and students can be asked to fill out and send in over the network questionnaires about their experiences during the project. The NGS Kids Network field tests asked teachers to send in a "Thoughts" questionnaire before they began the curriculum unit and other specific questionnaires at the end of each part of the four-part unit. At the end of the unit, teachers sent in their reactions to the entire unit, detailing parts that had gone well and parts that needed
improvement. Students also can be queried electronically about their experiences in the project.
This is an emerging area in which professional ethical standards are not yet clear, but TERC feels that teachers and students should be fully informed regarding which messages are being archived and read by research staff. Participants should know which messages are public, which ones are private, and which ones are being archived and studied for research purposes. As in medicine, informed consent should be the guide. Participants in projects
(teachers and students) must be told explicitly if their communication is private, and if not, who has the right to read it. For example, a project might establish several message categories, and explain to teachers the privacy status of each:
- Messages to a group, such as the teacher forum. These may be read by the stated
members of the group, i.e., all participants, all project administrators,
consulting scientists, and research staff (but not by students or other
individuals outside the project).
- Messages to an individual, e.g., another teacher, a specific staff member,
or a consulting scientist. These are private, to be read only by the person to
whom they are addressed.
- Messages to the research team. These are private and to be read only by the
evaluators themselves, not to be shared with other project staff except when
aggregated as part of evaluation summaries or with permission.
- Messages from one classroom to another. These would be read only by the
classroom and the project staff.
- Messages from one classroom to a group of other classrooms. These would be
read only by the classrooms and the project staff.
These are not easy issues and there are, as yet, no clear guidelines. Various
solutions to these problems are possible, and different project administrations
will feel comfortable with different structures. Only one thing is crystal
clear: these issues deserve careful thought.