Experiences in maintaining high school students’ motivation in a summer research program in virtual environments during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created numerous disruptions for educators and researchers, especially in 2020 and 2021. Critical in-person activities, including research, have been postponed or canceled throughout the academic and professional communities of the world. The Project SEED (Summer Experiences for the Economically Disadvantaged) program for high school students in the Ecohydrology Lab at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis was no exception. The 2020 and 2021 programs, originally scheduled for in person (2 months in the summer) was moved online with a similar time frame. The goals of Project SEED are to provide high school students with the opportunity to explore a career in the sciences and be involved in research at industries and universities. The goals remained the same during the virtual years and we had a total of two students who participated in the program in 2020 and 2021. In this commentary, we outline the experiences of moving the program to a virtual environment, and reflect on the experiences that motivated students’ participation and success in the program with adjusted project designs. According to student reflections and our discussions with the students, changing the research experiences to include data gathering and analysis (data mining) from published literature rather than the usual hands-on experiments, regular online interactions, enhancing student independence, and making mentors easily accessible were effective in fostering students’ participation and success in the program. With these new practices, the educational outcome of the virtual version of the Project SEED program is similar to the pre-pandemic program based on the quality of the final products (i.e., presentations) and students’ reflections. Informed by these experiences, this commentary makes recommendations for developing virtual research environments to assist students in realizing their potential and research goals. The suggested practices have implications for other educational settings (e.g., international programs through virtual environments).