2015
Kansas State University REU: IMPRESS Research Project
By Noah-Kee Marks, njm66@pitt.edu
Advisor:
Dr. Eleanor C. Sayre
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NSF Kansas State
University REU Program
University
of Pittsburgh
Welcome!
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This page summarizes my experience at the
Kansas State Physics Department’s REU program in the summer of 2015. Included
in the page are my thoughts on the REU experience in general, an overview of
my work, links to other information, my final presentation, and a poster I
made for the Physics Education Research Conference (PERC) during the week of
the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) meeting in College Park,
Maryland. |
Note
to Potential REU Students:
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I hadn’t done an REU before this summer, so I
can’t compare it to other programs, but I can say that I genuinely enjoyed
it. Working with Dr. Sayre has been really great. I’ve learned a lot through
my project, the reading group we had every week, and discussions with her and
other members of the KSUPER (Kansas
State University Physics Education Research) group. Additionally, Dr. Corwin
and Dr. Flanders were both extremely kind and helpful when it came to running
the program. As far the experience outside of the research
stuff, I’ve made some good friends with other students in the program! Kansas
is pretty okay too; it’s kind of hot, but you just push through that. I went
to a Royals game in Kansas City and a Cardinals (boooo)
game in St. Louis. I definitely recommend applying! Feel free to
email me if you want to know anything about the program. |
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My
project is part of a collaborative effort among the Rochester Institute of
Technology (RIT), DePaul University, and Kansas State University called
IMPRESS. IMPRESS stands for Integrating
Metacognitive Practices and Research
to Ensure Student Success. RIT
holds the IMPRESS workshop in the summer. It’s for first generation and
deaf/hard of hearing students about to begin classes at RIT. The goal of the
two week workshop is to improve students’ metacognitive skills and to develop
a community of learners, both of which improve the chances of the students’
success in STEM majors. The
project I worked on involved examining video data of a group of four students
conducing open-ended experiments on climate change during IMPRES. My goal was
to examine the videos and better understand the dynamics of the group, along
with how they thought about the nature of science itself. This involved
summarizing all of the videos available, making extremely detailed narratives
of a few of the videos, and then making claims based on those narratives. I
utilized a theoretical framework developed by Dr. Sayre, Dr. Paul Irving, and
Lauren Harris to focus my analysis. |
Final
Presentation and Poster:
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Click here to
view my final presentation, and here for my poster. |
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At the time of the REU, I am a rising junior
at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’m double
majoring Physics and the History & Philosophy of Science (HPS). It’s probably pretty clear what
physics is to anyone reading this, but HPS may not be as well-known. HPS, as
the name suggests, is the study of the history of science and the accompanying
philosophy that goes with it. The histories of physics and the other sciences
are not as clean as textbooks may suggest, but that just makes them all the
more interesting! Furthermore, the philosophy side asks questions like: What
are the limits of science? Is there one true theory of physics? Could we even know we have such a theory? To
what extent does the social character of science influence its results? These
are all questions HPS people seek to understand. I’m not really set on what I’m doing after
graduating yet. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be involved in education in some
way. Aside from academic things, I’m pretty big
into sports, I like books, I enjoy running and climbing, and I watch way too
many movies. |
Physics
Education Research Central
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This program is funded by the National Science
Foundation through grant number PHYS-1461251.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the National Science Foundation. |