Student Collaborative Research Project Using GLOBE Data to Explore Climate Patterns

You have spent several weeks learning about the Earth System, about how energy moves through the system, and about the importance of understanding connections in the system.  You have also learned factors that effect climate patterns . You are now ready to study the Earth System as scientists do, by asking questions, developing a hypothesis, finding data, analyzing the data, and reporting on what you find.   Scientists do not usually work alone these days, and neither will you.  You will do this research with your team of students from another class. 

Before you start, review the nine steps for doing scientific research.  You will create a web page for reporting on your research results.

Step 1.  Ask a question

First develop a good question for your research.  Not all questions are good research questions.  Use your understanding of factors that affect climate patterns to develop a good question. Decide what part of the topic you are interested in.  Here are some ideas for researchable questions.  Choose one of these questions or ask your own. Discuss your question with your teacher.

Set up a new web page with an Introduction, telling

• your question,
• why you are interested in that question, and
• what you already know about it.

Write the procedure you will use to explore your question. You will add to this procedure as you work -  take notes on how you are doing this research and update your procedure.
 
 

Step 3. Test your hypothesis by looking at data

In this step you use GLOBE data to test your hypothesis.  You learned how to find GLOBE data by doing the GLOBE Map Tutorial and the GLOBE Graphing Tutorial.

Go to the GLOBE Visualization web pages. Locate two schools that are located in areas that fit your research, and have made at least 800 data reports.  Study the data from these two schools. 

  Share your hypothesis with your partners on your inter-school team in your TeamWave room.  Read what their hypothesis is.  What do you think?  Give them feedback.

Step 4.  Revise your hypothesis

After you've looked at some data you have gained valuable experience and knowledge. You may now understand the measurements and the data more clearly. Do you want to revise your hypothesis to improve the wording? Discuss your hypothesis with your teacher. If you want to revise your hypothesis do it now.   Make notes in your procedure about why you are revising.

  Share your revised hypothesis with your partners in your Team in your TeamWave room.  Tell them if you revised or not,  and why. Read what their hypothesis is.   Ask them questions to clarify what they mean.  Do you agree with their hypothesis?   Let them know and support your opinion.

Step 5. Further testing of your hypothesis

    Now you need to find more data to test your hypothesis.  Search the GLOBE data for schools that are in the locations you want to study.  Find at least 5 more pairs of schools. 

Step 6.  Interpret the data - look for patterns

      Review all of the data you have found.  Do you see patterns?  All of the data may not support your hypothesis.  Maybe most of the data supports your hypothesis.  Can you think of reasons why some of the data does not support it?  Discuss the results on your web page and include your explanations.

  Continue to discuss your findings with your Inter-school team partners on TeamWave.
 
 

Step 7.  Draw Conclusions

    Discuss your data with your teacher. Do you think you have found enough data? Does the data support or not support your hypothesis? What conclusions can you make? What did you learn from this research?
 
 

Step 8. Communicate and Ask a new question

  Complete your web page report on your research.  Include all the parts of a research report.  Include the answers to these questions in your discussion:

What ESS spheres are involved in your area of research?
What seasonal changes do you notice in the data?
How is energy in the Earth System related the factor you studied?

  Publish your web page report. Link your page to your Science Web Cover page.  Read your Inter-School Team's report on the WWW.  Each student should send your partners email with feedback about their research.  Make sure you cc to your teacher.