Scientists at Work: Online Multimedia Vignettes Enable Students to Experience the Lives of Working Conservation Scientists

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] My students love the frog researcher in flip flops!" Jamie Hefti, a science teacher at Pulaski High School in Pulaski, New York, is describing his ninth graders' reaction to Crossing Boundaries (see "On the web"), a website that profiles graduate student Anna Savage and her research on the genetics of disease resistance in Arizona frogs. Savage's profile is one of six on the website intended to engage students in current scientific research through text, photographs, and video. The introduction to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) calls for students to learn science within the context of practice because "practices alone are activities and content alone is memorization. It is through integration that science begins to make sense and allows students to apply the material" (NGSS Lead States 2013, p. xiv). To enable students to see scientists in action and envision potential careers in science, we produced six multimedia vignettes portraying talented, enthusiastic young Cornell University graduate students conducting conservation science research (Figure 1, p. 40). Their research, involving fieldwork in sites ranging from meadows in New York State to lakes in the Bolivian Andes, addresses scientific questions related to plants, birds, fish, and frogs (Figure 2, p. 41). Crossing Boundaries, a National Science Foundation--funded project, introduces students to careers in which information and communication technologies are used to analyze, evaluate, and communicate about conservation science. We produced the profiles because our previous work with teachers had revealed that many students in the biological sciences are unaware of careers beyond those in health fields. Even when students conduct environmental science projects using the same scientific techniques and technological tools used by professionals, they commonly do not make the link to careers unless such connections are presented explicitly. We created the conservation scientist profiles to bridge these gaps, helping students envision a broader range of biological careers and see the relevance of science and technology in addressing critical ecological questions in our world today. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The profiles model science as a process of inquiry that is methodological, personal, and approachable. They show scientists as real people conducting interesting and often exciting research, such as Marita Davison slogging through deep mud to study flamingo ecology in Bolivia or Nate Senner traveling from the Canadian Arctic to an island on the south coast of Chile to track the continental-scale migratory flights of Hudsonian Godwits. The vignettes also show that science isn't easy or straightforward, and students follow along as the graduate students confront challenges and make creative decisions about how to forge ahead. For example, Senner's blog from the field relates that he was "almost ready to curl up in a ball and head home in tears" after discovering that he had lost crucial supplies needed for his research due to a generator malfunction in a warehouse. But with help from colleagues in Anchorage, he cobbled together the needed supplies and got into the field on time for seasonal research that could not wait. Working with real data and some of the technological applications presented in these profiles, students analyze issues, evaluate options, and communicate results. To give our profiles broad appeal, we selected four female and two male scientists representing a variety of personalities, geographic settings, research topics, and techniques (Figure 2). Each profile includes three videos. The "In the Field" video shows the scientist conducting and discussing his or her field research. In "The Tools I Use," the scientists demonstrate and discuss how they use technology to investigate and communicate about their research. These videos show how scientists use practices identified in the NGSS such as Asking Questions; Analyzing and Interpreting Data; Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking; and Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions. …