About this Project

This project uses temperature as the/one variable to understand the ecology of an ecosystems.The research can head in any one of a number of directions. It can focus on terrestrial, freshwater, or marine habitats.  How temperature can affect the physical and biological environment is the common thread through a variety of student-initiated research projects.

Using the Methods of Working Scientists

An important thing about these projects is that you (the student) will be using methods of working scientists. This is not just an "exercise" where you act out part of the "scientific process." You will, instead, be engaged in the full research process -- understanding the problem, reviewing relevant literature, formulating testable questions, proposing a research design, gathering data, analyzing it, and publishing your findings.

Step-wise Approach, With Feedback

The projects will be set up in a way that will take you through each stage of the work in a step-wise manner. You will use online tools, on this website, to discuss your work with your classroom teacher and with the lead scientist associated with the project.

After each step of your work you will produce a "work product" that summarizes what you have done so far -- and that you can use to get feedback from you teacher, the working scientists, and sometimes from classmates. This feedback is an important part of sharpening the questions that you ask, improving your proposed research design, and of analyzing your results. Scientists rarely work in isolation--they typically depend on each other to move forward. This project will give you the same opportunity to work with and learn from others.

Use of the Web

This website is central to everything that you will do in this project. During each step of the process you will have access to a discussion "forum" that you can use to ask questions and to get help. It will also be a place where your teacher and where the research scientists ask YOU questions.

We expect that each student working on the project will post to the discussion forum -- either in response to teachers and scientists or in response to other students -- three times a week. Your grade for forum participation will depend on the quality of these posts, as well as on the frequency.

The website will also be the place where you turn in the work that you complete at the end of each stage of the research. For each project stage, there will be a clearly defined "deliverable" that you need to complete.

The final deliverable, of course, is your published research. For most of you, this publication will be in the form of a "poster presentation" that provides a summary of your key findings. But our focus in this project will be as much on the process of reaching that end point as it is on the final result. Our goal is, certainly, to learn more about the ecosystems in your area -- but equally important is the goal of introducing you to the methods used by professional scientists, and on providing you with support and feedback as you learn to use those methods.