BSA Science Education and Outreach - www.PlantingScience.org

PlantingScience – growing tomorrow's scientists by fostering student research through scientific inquiry and online mentorship.

Thank you for stopping by to look at our program. We appreciate that you have taken the time to do so! As you go through the text to follow we ask that you focus not on the specifics, but on the potential. We are very early in our development and are refining our approach at an extremely fast rate. As such, we'd also appreciate any feedback you might like to provide - wdahl@botany.org.

PlantingScience - The Birds-eye View
Imagine a team of high school students conducting a research project they design themselves. The project is supported by inquiry-based materials written to encompass core biological principles that facilitate their understanding of scientific processes. As they conduct their research, they post information and data in real-time to a web page where peers review and comment on their work. Now add in a scientist volunteering as a mentor. The mentor guides the team by posing questions designed to help students discover the answers they seek. This all takes place within an online community structured to provide mentorship, peer-to-peer interactions and learning.

Now imagine not one team, but thousands, all working simultaneously on various projects around the country. They are using the online communications tool PlantingScience, which allows them to share their experiences and build collaborative networks to solve problems. All of the information, experiences and knowledge are posted online and freely shared throughout the community and with other students in schools around the world.

PlantingScience , at its very core, uses three concepts indicated by research to facilitate learning – a) hands-on inquiry, b) mentorship and c) peer-to-peer dialog and team learning.

Vision
We are committed to infusing authentic inquiry and science experts into a research experience for middle school and high school students (and their teachers). We are taking a comprehensive approach to develop, implementation, assessment tools, support resources, and services that improve the teaching and learning of science. And, as you might anticipate, we use plants as model research organism to explore a range of biological concetps.

It is fair to say plants are currently underrepresented in biology curricula; open-ended inquiry approaches that focus on plants are scarcer yet. Plants—inexpensive, easy to keep, and non-controversial subjects for experimentation—are ideal for sharing the excitement of scientific discovery in K-12 classrooms. The focal challenge is to sustain a nationwide network of plant scientists, science educators, and classroom learners to create complex learning environments that optimize the learning and teaching of inquiry science. The classroom intervention involves students working in teams defined by the teacher to generate team research questions centered on a core biology standard. Our initial target is high school, where online scientist mentors and classroom teachers co-mentor students as they conduct team experiments. We also include projects at the middle school and undergraduate university levels.

The Botanical Society of America (BSA), the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB), Texas A&M University, and K-12 educators are partners in this endeavor that bridges scientific research and education. PlantingScience (www.plantingscience.org) is designed to integrate the partners’ expertise and capitalize on the contributions plant scientists and teachers can make toward improving scientific literacy. As the project evolves, more scientific societies and scientists are coming on board in support of our efforts, the Society for Economic Botany being the most recent.

It must be noted: rather than proposing a concept and requesting funding for testing, we have engaged in the development of the idea, implemented the program, modified our delivery in conjunction with the needs/specifications of our stakeholders and qualitatively assessed our ability to support our goals. Our online interface has evolved and improved after each of our four trials based on results and consultation with participants – students, teachers and scientists. In the test stage, we had over 80 participating scientists from two scientific societies and supported active research for over 1,500 students in 16 schools around the country. The program is free, and to the best of our ability we have avoided barriers to participating, apart from the need for access to the internet.

Development Support: How can you help?

Having satisfied our requirement to create positive change and deliver on our goals, we are now seeking support to develop in areas outside our expertise. The specific areas are teacher and mentor development, materials development and quality assessment (test development and program assessment).

BSA maintains the goal of moving the PlantingScience program to other scientific societies/disciplines as it proves itself effective.

If you are interested, I would love the opportunity talk with you further about your involvement in the PlantingScience program and its potential to improve scientific literacy in America.

Thanks for your time!

PS - May 2008 UPDATE

The note above was written in early 2006, a year after we started the online activities (updated in 2007 and now in 2008). It was at a time when we were confident and had shown PlantingScience would work in practice as well as theory. The feedback from teachers was incredibly positive. Having scientists link with students had uplifted attitudes and put science on a new level for the vast majority of students engaging in the program. It was also a time when we needed to start building the long-term relationships to ensure sustainability.

To date we have had the privilege of operating in 49 schools, in 24 states, working with 60+ teachers and supporting over 2,500 student-led research projects. Over 400,000 people have visited the PlantingScience web site. We have continued to grow participation at a manageable rate while we learn the intricacies of the online environment. The two session durning the current school year saw over 1,500 students participating online. We are targeting close to 2,500 students for the fall 2008 session. Our goal is to be working with over 12,000 students online in 2010.

Over 120 scientists have provided thousands of hours mentoring. Many more are waiting to become involved as the program expands. In line with our initial vision, and as promised to Dr. Alberts (see our history page), we have also begun expanding the number of Scientific Societies taking part in the program. This will extend our scientific base and add to the potential number of scientist mentors available during a given PlantingScience session.

The past year was good in terms of partnership development in other ways as well.

* The Monsanto Fund stepped up as our first corporate partner, providing support for topic development. At present we have two PlantingScience topics online (Wonder of Seeds and the Power of Sunlight) and four more in development (Genetics, Ecology, Economic Botany and Respiration) for testing in the fall. We hope to have topics available using plants as model organisms in scientific inquiry projects that cover all core biological concepts by 2011.
* The National Science Foundation came next and will support significant teacher development and educational research (quality assessment) components for the program.
* Gear-UP St. Louis has stepped forward as a partner, using PlantingScience as a tool in their program in 2008.
* The Missouri Botanical Garden will work with thePlantingScience Team in support of the GEAR-UP St. Louis program, hosting teacher workshops and "mini-scientific conferences" for the students participating in the program.

As you'll note, we've been able to check off teacher development, materials development and quality assessment from our initial wish list. As we move forward, we see many new areas arising in which outside support would significantly improve our ability to enhance the effectiveness of the PlantingScience program. If you are considering how you or your organization might become involved in a significant educational outreach program supporting tomorrows scientists, please consider our program.

We hope our vision and record of achievement will encourage you to consider becoming a PlantingScience partner. We would welcome and appreciate your involvement. Please take a few minutes to give me a call to learn more about PlantingScience and how you can become involved.

Sincerely,

Bill Dahl
Executive Director
Botanical Society of America
314-577-9566 or 314-566-6842 (mobile)
wdahl@botany.org
www.PlantingScience.org