Summer "Visit" - 2020 - OIRMA

Quotes

• Real astronomy is the business of trying to answer previously unanswered questions about the cosmos using methods that use (or take into account, in the case of theory) actual data from actual measurements.
• [student:] what I will never forget is my temporary lack of comprehension and occasional struggles to keep up with the rest of the group. In those situations, I was forced to accept my own shortcomings and ask others to clarify or slow down. This last week has taught me to rely on others and be honest with my own skills.
• [...]the program creates an in-practice glimpse of what it can be like to work with students in a radically different way from how we do in the standard classroom. Not knowing the answer is a powerful interpersonal equalizer. And that leveling is not an ornamental feature or political nicety, it’s a critical precursor to collaboration in a group of educators and students.
• The best thing about the week was being able to contribute to a real project where we don’t know the answer. [...] It was refreshing to have the chance to explore and analyze.
• It was very interesting that we had to immediately pivot our plans. It doesn’t get more authentic than when Plan A didn’t work, and as a team we had to talk out our next steps on how to find applicable data. It has also been very interesting to see how that develops as we all branch into our own pieces of the research, and how that dialogue continues.

Related Teams

• OIRMA/Gorjian