Research and Society – Summer Capstone
Instructions for your Volunteer/Research Journal
During your research or volunteer experience you will need to keep a journal of your experiences that
will be turned in for completion of course requirements. The journal entries will vary somewhat depending on
whether you are engaging in a science education or research activity. Below are instructions for your daily
experience entries and for several essay-reflections that can be completed at any point during your
volunteer/research experience. Both daily entries and essays should be included in your journal.
Daily Entries – To be kept every day you are active in your research or volunteer activity.
For each day you are engaged in your volunteer or research experience keep a daily log of your
activities. The information entered should include:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Date and times.
Number of hours.
A general summary of the day’s experience.
Specific notes on positive or negative experiences. Describe your successes and any difficulties that you
encountered – how you solved them if you did, or is it an ongoing problem.
Bring your journal to lab each week so you can share your experiences with your classmates. It is best not to do
these right away, but to wait until you are a few weeks into your experience. Each essay should be 200 – 500
words.
Essay Entries – You can write these essays at any point during your volunteer or research experience.
Each essay will be assigned a discussion date for one of our class meetings.
1. The challenges of talking science with the non-science public. Whether you are engaged in research
or science education activities you will have the opportunity to describe or explain something from
your science knowledge and experiences to members of the public, friends, or family. As you start
talking about the topic try giving a quick/simplistic explanation at first and wait to see if the
person/people seem interested in hearing more. During these exchanges it is often useful to have
some referential analogies handy – something that your audience will have familiarity with. If the
questions you get seem to be off the mark then there is probably some basic misunderstanding that
you need to address. As you try this with people of different ages and backgrounds, you will find
that the conversation will be very different. Your challenge is to encourage interest in the topic –
what is the best way to do that?
a. Your essay should focus on the different experiences you have had and how you dealt with
particularly challenging exchanges. Describe what you have learned from these exchanges
and how your approach has changed as a result.
2. People believe the craziest things. Describe any experience you have had where somebody stated
something as fact that was clearly not consistent with science. How did you deal with the situation?
What do you think the best approach is for talking to people who have convictions or
misunderstandings about science and nature?
3. Communicating the art of critical thinking. Choose a topic from the natural sciences for which
many in the general public may have misconceptions. How does critical thinking contribute to your
understanding of this concept? How could you effectively communicate this to a person with
limited background in science? Write a narrative as if you were speaking with such a person.
4. What have I learned? Towards the end of your experience write an essay on what you have learned
from talking with the non-science public. Describe experiences where they knew something that
you did not, even if it was not perfectly accurate. How did you respond? Did you display interest
and ask them questions about their knowledge? Did you follow up the conversation by looking up
more information on the topic?