Science Fair Research Project Quickstart: The #1 Ground Rule -> Reading

Following my presentation on Engineering Research Projects this week at Santa Teresa High School, I thought I would architect a model for participants starting from scratch on a project for a science fair. Any science fair. I actually had a hard time finding a perspective that would fit the “Simple, but not Easy” mindset useful for innovative thinking. After a week of pondering, I think I found a way to describe this in a usable manner.

IT’S SIMPLE: The project needs to be focused on RESEARCH. Understand that research leads to contributions to the framework of knowledge, experience and understanding. Think about how you can add to such a framework. Research often leads to incremental innovation, and in extraordinary circumstances quantum innovation that impacts how others think about things, do things, and choose things. Imagine yourself as a change-maker. Research is built on a culture; a culture of curiosity, uncertainty and exploration. Immerse yourself in that culture.

NOT EASY: The seed for a research idea may generally start in two ways: (1) Reading research literature as an extension of class-based learning, and (2) Observing then defining problems then reading the research literature about the problem and existing solutions. No matter what, research excellence requires reading of the literature. And it’s hard work. Getting access to scholarly research literature. Selecting research literature that is within the scope of the research idea. Applying critical thinking to the research literature readings to support and justify the research project.

TIPS:

1. Acquire at least 3 scholarly research articles for your collection that are good candidates for your bibliography. Such articles should be “peer-reviewed” and published in well-known research journals. There are web resources that explain how to identify such leading edge research articles. Note that 3 is just a starting point. Eventually aim for more…between 5 and 10 for a good science fair project.
2. Select research articles written by researchers at well-known universities or research institutions. What universities have you heard of and may be interested in? Start there. As you look through your search results, certain names will appear numerous times and may be leading researchers in your research area interest. Look up their professional web page for more information on their research program.
3. Read the bibliographies of the selected research articles. First, this reveals the quality of the research article itself. Second, other useful research articles may be discovered from this list.
4. Use the selected research articles to build the rationale statement for the research project. Cite the research articles, and connect information from the research articles with the research project idea. Association between the idea and published research is a solid way of showing support and justification for the project.
5. Read the selected research articles with two purposes in mind. First, especially for a science fair newcomer, the purpose is to gain insight on the scientific research method and become familiarized with terminology, styles and methodology. Second is the extraction of information that supports and justifies the project idea; the extracted information should persuade reviewers, judges, and teachers as well as yourself of the projects worthiness for investment of your time, resources, effort and energy. Research should not be wasteful.
6. Pay attention to the titles of the scholarly research articles. This small piece of information is actually HUGE. It will teach you about scope and thrust. Scope describes the boundaries and connections. Thrust hints at the originality and scholarly nature of the investigation. Create a working project title that contains the scope and thrust of your research project idea.
7. As a whole, use the selected research articles as models for writing your own eventual research articles. Learn how to justify a research project. See how much detail goes into methodology descriptions. Find styles (eg, tables, charts and more) to present results in revealing ways.
8. As the research project idea gains size and traction, keep a list of key words. About 3 to 5. These should match the working project title. The key words list estimates how interesting the project may be, and hints of the potential audience for the research.
9. Guard rails for the research project also includes the category and field of study (if the science fair has these set up). These categorizations help shape the research question and the plan for investigation.
10. Let’s get started. The simplest way to start is to do a web search engine with “Google Scholar” followed by your topic. Change the search term until the search results provide promising leads.

AVOIDS (INSTEAD FOCUS YOUR ENERGY ON QUALITY RESOURCES):

1. Science Buddies or similar educational web sites.
2. Kaggle and other similar un-checked repositories.
3. Articles without authors and dates, especially those with commercial purpose.
4. YouTube videos.
5. News media.

Good luck!