Remote Summer Research Experience For High School Students: Testing the Relationship Between Body Size and the Probabilities of Extinction and Origination of Ordovician Marine Animals

Abstract:

The Stanford Earth Young Investigators Biodiversity summer internship program offers high school students the opportunity to conduct original research within Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences. Since its inception, up to 20 high school students have participated per year in this intensive 8-week summer program. They have learned about the role of animal body size in the history of life while collecting body size measurements of fossil specimens, attending field trips, interacting with and learning from Stanford researchers, and conducting original research projects to be presented at AGU Fall Meetings. The COVID-19 pandemic forced all summer internship programs at Stanford to be conducted remotely. Responding to this challenge, we redesigned the program using backwards class design to offer an immersive online experience while reducing the length of the program by two-thirds. The program was held synchronously on Zoom for three hours each day across seven weeks. Video recordings of lectures and materials were hosted and shared using the Canvas learning management system and the Google Drive cloud service. During this program, students focused on testing the relationship between body size and the probabilities of extinction and origination using existing body-size data for fossil marine animals from the Ordovician Period. The program was structured to provide the necessary background in natural history, training in statistical methods, and programming in R for interns to design a research project in groups of three and to submit abstracts and develop posters for the 2020 AGU Fall Meeting. Lectures included active learning approaches, group activities, and guest speakers who shared their relevant expertise. Many of these activities leveraged Zoom’s breakout room feature. The program incorporated team-building activities such as multiple ice breakers, Pictionary, virtual field trips to a museum collection and the Stanford campus, and the interactive competitive quiz game Kahoot, which was used to asses retention of key concepts. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, we successfully created an inclusive and equitable virtual research experience, resulting in four group abstracts submitted to the 2020 AGU Fall Meeting Bright STaRS session.