Summer "Visit" - 2020 - OIRMA

Quotes

• I’m certain that I would not have been able to get the work needed done without the help of the group, teachers and students equally.
• [...]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.
• [student:] The most surprising thing I saw was how everyone was learning at the same time and all dealing with the same challenges. It was surprising to see the instructors figuring out TOPCAT at the same time as the students. It was also surprising to see how we encountered obstacles that were not expected, and we had to figure out in the moment. These things were surprising because I am used to a classroom environment where the answers to problems and predetermined and the teachers already know them. I appreciated this contrast to the classroom, and I believe that this contrast is one of the reasons NITARP exists.
• 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.
• Real astronomy is DATA. It is having to think outside the box to turn the invisible visible by using multiple sets of information from potentially multiple sources. I expected this would be part of the research project but was surprised by the ability to successfully change methods for data collection during the project.

Related Teams

• OIRMA/Gorjian