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Project-Based Science For General Education College Students And Seventh Graders: Pitfalls And Pointers, Walter S. Borowski, Malcolm P. Frisbie, Tara Shepperson, Linda Frost

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

We teach a general-education science course for honors students, who in turn mentor disadvantaged seventh graders through a water quality investigation of a local stream. Activities for both groups involve all aspects of a scientific project: scientific background, local context, project design, data collection and analysis, and communication of scientific results. On successive weeks, we first lead our college students through each step in the process then the honors students mentor middle school students through those same steps. College and middle school teachers act as facilitators, and each honors student is responsible for about 6 to 8 middle schoolers. The …