A very interesting project. 

Thank you Kauser! We are so excited to share the details of this project. Feel free to ask us questions. Was there something particularly interesting?

Hello everyone, 

Our team is looking forward to having a dialogue with you and to hear your comments and questions. We are learning a lot about what it means to do this kind of research and implementation during a pandemic. We have finished recruiting the middle school youth for the second year of implementation and want to share what we are thinking in terms of modifications so we can better support learners to make the connections between the CT and the mechanistic reasoning.

Thank you for sharing your project! The topic appears to capture a growing challenge in NYC as lyme disease can be difficult to diagnose and treat and/or live with. I'm intrigued by the difference you found between your initial treatment and control groups. How were both groups engaged with the question for examination of their urban ecosystem and what did the treatment group experience that was different? What did the scaffolding look like? I look forward to learning more about your first year experiences! Thanks again for sharing your project with us.

~Sarah

Hi Sarah,

I was the curriculum developer and lead educator on the project and I’d be happy to answer your questions. The treatment group participated in a 4 week summer camp where we introduced them to the concepts of Lyme disease and urban ecology through hands on activities (like owl pellet dissections and a predator/prey game) and interactions with agent-based computer models. The control group did not participate in the summer camp so we didn’t engage them with the content. As for scaffolding, we provided Google forms to guide students through activities, played review Kahoot quizzes and revisited the same model throughout the program to build understanding. I would be happy to answer any other questions you have!

Hi DecodeNYC team! Thanks for already answering the question above about scaffolding and differences between groups. My high school science students struggle with the decoding tasks you've described above when it comes to using simulations that model real-world events, and I'm excited that you've found a significant shift in students' capacity to match code to science concepts!

I'm thinking this project presents a powerful opportunity for students to experience agency, with their analyses in hand -- so I'm curious about what final project/product of student knowledge and skills is currently in the curriculum, as well as what might be possible! How might students use their analysis to practice skills of advocacy, presentation, or change-making?

Hi Kirstin,

I’m so glad that you see potential for this project to impact your work with students. For the culminating project the students work in groups to create their own ecosystem model based on a template that we’ve explored as a class. They are responsible for adding a new agent (another species) and writing the code to control its behavior and interactions with other agents. This gives the students a lot of freedom to implement their own ideas in code and try things without explicit guidance on what must be included

In other iterations of this curriculum where we had more time and a student population with more experience doing scientific mechanistic reasoning we have also given students the opportunity to create models for different scientific systems like astrophysics and climate.

Presentation skills are built in to the curriculum as students must present their final models and they also build that skill by sharing out their ideas throughout the program.

As far as advocacy and change-making, we do one activity where students evaluate different policy interventions to reduce Lyme rates in their ecosystem and use a model to test their preferred approach. This could easily be expanded to a larger conversation about human impacts on our environment and policy advocacy.

Another aspect of the project that we neglected to mention is that we have a 2-day followup workshop with the participants - approximately 6 months later. The purpose of this workshop is to see if the learners can transfer what they have learned and apply it to a new ecosystem model. We learned a lot from this doing 2-day workshop this past January. Gabrielle - would you please share about that?

Sure, thanks Preeti. The 2-day workshop was a good opportunity for students to translate their understanding to a new ecosystem, in this case an aquatic ecosystem featuring invasive zebra mussels. We introduced the challenge via a scientist stakeholder and put the students in groups to make or modify a model to answer questions about this ecosystem. We were pleased to see that students retained the ability to work with agent-based models and apply them to real-world phenomena.

It’s worth mentioning that we also had a one-day review session before the workshop to activate the students’ knowledge and help them hit the ground running for the workshop

Preeti - This looks like a great project! I love the idea of integrating computational thinking and learning about ecosystems. I'm working on a new project that will link engineering and environmental science. We could learn a lot from your project. Do you have any early publications on the results or models used in this project? 

Hi folks,

We are curious about the sorts of resources you provide to students as they interact with the materials. What sorts of guidance was provided in the system or by staff on the museum floor?

Hi Marcia,

This program was conducted entirely remotely on Zoom. Most activities were actively facilitated and synchronous. Even when students were working alone in breakout rooms staff was available to assist. With regards to resources, we used Google Slides and Google Forms to provide guidance while students completed activities and also re-shared instructions in the Zoom chat.

Also Marcia, Another aspect of our program since we were fully remote is that we sent home some materials for hands-on work. It included owl pellets for dissection, and some other such things that students can not easy get on their own.

Also Marcia, Another aspect of our program since we were fully remote is that we sent home some materials for hands-on work. It included owl pellets for dissection, and some other such things that students can not easy get on their own.

This sounds like an amazing project. How did you recruit staff to help with the different sections? What have been your challenges or barriers and how did you overcome them?

What an interesting project! I was wondering how you recruited your participants (control and treatment)? Are they students from the same school or something else? 

I was also wondering what you foresee will be challenges in adapting this curriculum to an in-school setting? I used to work at the New York Hall of Science and then promptly shifted to a formal science educator position for a couple of years, and the standards and limitations of classroom teaching can be so tough to navigate when trying to adapt activities created in informal spaces. How do you foresee navigating this? 

Hi Preeti.  A very interesting and worthwhile project!  I, too, would love to see some write-ups of the methods and findings.  I'm doing some research with COVID-Inspired Data Science for Youth (that's the video title) which uses CODAP tools and Netlogo as well as a storybook to help kids interpret and see patterns in epidemiological data.  

Hey Preeti, this is a strange and funny connection, but I too was delighted to see your name. I am fairly sure my sibling and I shared cookies with you, Alan, and Sara Lee back in the early 2000s? Small world!

DecodeNYC team: I was coming back to thank you for this lovely presentation. This project has such an interesting connection between computer-science-thinking and real-world science problems, and I'm excited to see what your next cohorts will help you learn :)

Lovely piece of work.  I am curious about one thing:  Who did the LOGO modelling? Was it the students, or the project staff?  If the students, what was their prior experience with the modeling environment?