Staying Connected

Submitted by Michael on Wed, 2006-09-06 19:35.

Challenge: A traditional Research Experiences for Undergraduate or REU site physically hosts participants in one location. However, since IRIS is a consortium of universities, the resources of the organization are geographically distributed. As a result a traditional format would be unable to capitalize on the consortium’s extensive resources and potential mentor pool, which includes the full spectrum of specialties within seismology. Fortunately, face-to-face contact is no longer the only way to connect individuals working on related problems as a community of learners. In 2002, 81% of all US institutions of higher learning offered at least one fully on-line or “blended” course (combined face-to-face and online media in distance learning). This translates into over 1.6 million students gaining experience with distance learning by taking at least one on-line course during the fall of 2002. Hence current technology and recent research on distance-learning and building online learning communities, combined with a generation of students that are computer literate and comfortable using technology to communicate, make the time ripe for creation of a ”Blended” Research Experience for Undergraduates.
		Using Blogs: All interns participating in the IRIS Undergraduate Internship Program will be required to create and maintain a blog to describe their projects in their own words, identify and structure overarching and periodic goals, monitor and evaluate progress, as well as discuss the broader reaches of their work. Not only does blogging help an individual intern develop a deeper understanding of their own project and the research process in general; blogs also provide a venue for other interns to participate in the individual's research experience. Internship hosts will also be able to make use of intern blogs as a mentoring tool by regularly reviewing their intern's blog to gain insights into interns’ current thinking and development. In case you've missed the blogging revolution, Wikipedia defines blogs as: A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log or weblog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles, most often in reverse chronological order. Early weblogs were simply manually updated components of common websites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of web articles posted in said chronological fashion made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software on regular web hosting services.
Discussion Forums: Discussion boards, a well-established online technology, allow peers to quickly and easily post topics of interest or reply to posts. Having progressed well beyond the preceding technology of web bulletin boards, discussion boards allow such features as E-mail notification, archival, and search capability. This will also allow future interns with similar concerns to benefit from the experience of past interns. Although such communications may suffer somewhat from a lack of nonverbal and contextual cues, many online learners prefer it because they can post a reply at a convenient time and place (Ubon & Kimble, 2003). This virtual third-party will support the internship cohort by providing interns with a place outside the traditional mentor relationship to “safely” ask questions, share their experiences, and offer suggestions or assistance to other interns. While it is desirable that most discussions occur among the interns, an IRIS internship alumni with technical knowledge and the maturity of experience will be available to stimulate conversations, offer advice, or help direct interns to additional resources.