Duration: 6 minutes 11 seconds

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Silvia Rudmann

First of all, I said to them to follow they passions because I do not mind what topic they want to do and I don't mind the subject either, talking about the big branches of science, right? And I always try to move them from topics that they're going to take them a lot of research that is not taken anywhere. So, I have to lower down the level sometimes for them to have project that is achievable in the timeframe that we have.

Ritu Bhamra

It is just going an extra step to know more about it. What we know already or to find an answer to what we don't know.

Joelle Rodrigues

It was about fine-tuning those ideas by looking at what we can do in the space of a classroom.

Therese Kanna

Narrowing down a topic to a specific question is daunting for any person in any field, no matter your expertise level. And especially for another scientist, such as a student, it's easy for them to get overwhelmed with the options. So, it's really about clarifying with them, well, we have to make sure we understand, well, what is achievable within the timeframe and what is achievable with resources that are available to you.

Dr Liam Phelan

So, research questions typically start out when people are first thinking about them. They typically start out being way too big. So, much too big for a semester or a year or a PhD or whatever it might be. And so, that process of breaking that down into smaller bits can be really helpful for refining a research question, if you like, to make it more manageable, more achievable. Reviewing the literature is so important and what students need to be looking for, and in fact, what any scientists need to be looking for is literature that is relevant to the question that they're asking. So, their own research question. And also, the quality needs to be there. And really, the shortcut for that is to look at peer review. So, looking at literature that has been peer reviewed. That means that scientists have submitted their manuscript to a quality scholarly journal and then, some other experts, wherever they might might be on the planet have reviewed that manuscript and have thought about where the strengths are and the weaknesses.

Dr Bonnie McBain

As a student, you probably starting off with absolutely zero knowledge about something, so the literatures will, the review process will actually build your familiarity with where the current state of play is. When you're looking at the research gaps, that gives you that beautiful opportunity to then go, "Okay, nobody knows anything about this and this is where I can see myself contributing my research and my time to be able to create new knowledge."

Therese Kanna

It's important for them to do a thorough search of the literature and the way they can do that is you use keywords, you find the key papers for the topic you're interested in. And initially, you want to just skim the papers, really just try to find out, well, what are they doing, how they're doing it, and why are they doing it?

Dr Bonnie McBain

Get someone to sit with you when you do that for the first time. You might have a mentor that can help you and in the first article, maybe ask them to recommend something that you could read as a starting point and then, step your way through the different parts of that article so that you can get a feel for how it's constructed. Often, people don't write scientific articles from the top down. They write it in all sorts of mixed order and the first thing you read in the abstract is usually the last thing that's written. So, sometimes reading it in a different order is helpful too, so it depends on the subject matters.

James

I think just reading the abstract and introduction first to get a good overview and really trying to understand what they're saying, so read them a few times and then, maybe the conclusion. So, you get a overview of what the article is about, finding the parts that you understand, and looking at those and then, sort of branching out from there.

Owen

I narrowed down my focus more. Our teacher told us to look at review articles because review articles are basically things that summarise the current state of the research. What we know already, what tools we have already, and also what are the questions, that they tell you what methods we have, what we know, and what other questions.

Ritu Bhamra

Something you liked in that article and you're going to include in your literature review or in your report, make a note in your logbook or in your notes and portfolio. Highlight it and keep it, what you liked and why. Does it link directly? Does it help you to go a step further in your research?

Surabhi

You can go on Google Scholar, that's the big one. So, you can look on there and find stuff, but even then, because it's a search engine, you can't always find exactly what you want. So, a tip is to go on Wikipedia, which you shouldn't use but if you scroll down to the bottom, they have references on what other people used and they're like proper sources by scientists, so if you click on them, it'll take you to their article. So, you can look at that and then that will give you, it's like an outreach point.

Dr Liam Phelan

What I would do is start with the question, really. So, what is it that I'm wanting to find out? And then, when I'm clear on that, then maybe even as part of the literature review, I might have a little bit of a look around and see what it is that other scientists working in this similar area or addressing similar questions, even if they're in a different area, what kinds of methodologies have they used and did they work or not work?

Tim Smith

The more effort you put into that initial question development and more effort you put into that discovery of techniques from the literature, the less likelihood it is that you're gonna spend so much time on developing your initial method.

[End of transcript]

Duration: 6 minutes 48 seconds

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Dr Liam Phelan

So just thinking about structure of scientific writing, there'll be a title and the title's really important because it's telling the reader what to expect and what's following here. And then there's really clear section headings and they'll start with introduction. And so that's where you're setting the scene if you like. So what is this research and why is it important? What's the context for that research? And then you'll have a methodology section and that's really talking about what it is that you did. And then you'll have a results section and that's where you're talking about what it is that you found. And then you'll have a discussion section and that's where you're talking about what it is, like what it means. So the results that you got, what's the meaning or the significance of that if you like. And then a conclusion is there so you can tie a ribbon around it.

Dr Bonnie McBain

Yeah, I think there's a bit of a convention around scientific reports. And the reason for having that convention is that we know where to look for the bits of information that we are looking for. So if we're looking about looking to find how you did the study, of course we're gonna go to the methodology section. So it's not rocket science but what we find is that it can be very easy to confuse what goes in which section. And that's one of the things that I think probably will be quite challenging as a student never having written their own report.

Ritu Bhamra

My suggestion to the students have been start working on the report as we are progressing, like by the time of first assessment task, they have got their question, they have got their hypothesis, they have thought about their method, how they're going to do a progress about it. Put those sections of the reports now.

Joelle Rodrigues

Right at the beginning, and I think it's in the first few lessons where we look at the structure of the report, I think it's introducing it that early that really prepares them for what's involved.

Dr Devika Kamath

So the first thing I normally do also for myself and my students, is to get them to write an outline of what they see the different sections of the report are. And then of course stringing a narrative. And typically what I do is I tell them, "Well write as much as you want, but don't go into writing paragraphs. Just put one liners on what you expect the different paragraphs are gonna be." And then I have a look at it and I say, "Okay, well these are all unnecessary because science writing has a brilliant concept of referencing. So if you want to present a concept instead of explaining it yourself, you can reference to a paper or a textbook that has it." So you introduce the concept of referencing very heavily and this helps you not write an extensive report. But then the challenge of course is really connecting the different sections. Often when my students write reports, the sections independently are very strong but there is no link or a segue between the first section and the second and the third. You don't have to present every experiment you did in the process, that's for you and your mentor or your supervisor. When you present it, you just want to present the most critical aspects of your research.

Dr Bonnie McBain

We talk to our students about having a domino effect to writing. So if one topic falls over it then falls into the next topic and falls into the next topic. And you can apply that to entire reports and the structure or you can apply that to paragraphs within one section or you can apply that to sentences within a paragraph.

Silvia Rudmann

Good paper is something that it has a flow, easy to understand, easy to see the key points, easy to see the answer to the inquiry question, and it follows that research process. And you can see and read between the lines in the discussion that the student actually followed that true science in the development of the idea. And then the development of the proving that hypothesis.

Dr Devika Kamath

People underestimate how much information you can put in tables and figures. And I think presenting data in tables and figures is quite a skill as well. People get better at it.

Kurt Nicholson

If you can explain something well with small words, use small words, all right? Often some of the best science over the last 20 years has actually been people taking science from 50, 100 years ago and writing it in language that people can understand.

Surabhi

It's all about editing. Like looking back, making sure what you've written is right. Did I say it the right way? What tense did I use? And then like getting feedback from your teachers. Then there's also like websites on the internet that can talk about what you write in a report. And then also looking at literature reviews. How did other people write their reports? And then you look at the language they used and the formatting that they used and stuff.

Rebeccah

Report writing was probably out of the whole science extension, the most challenging part for me. You write certain things for English, you write certain things for Science, but then science extension's kind of a combination of both of them 'cause you have to use the sophisticated language but then you're also just going straight to the point, like in biology.

Kurt Nicholson

Probably like the best advice in terms of the writing requirements of science extension for teachers and students drafts early, drafts often.

Ritu Bhamra

I kept the submission of the final report four days after the trial exam's finished so they are not stressed about that. So they can just fine tune it at the end and submit it and I'll mark and then we'll put the marks in.

Tim Smith

My deadline for the submission of the report has been after trials just because I've found that trying to get it in earlier isn't really attainable. So that's worked pretty well so far with a smaller number of students and it gives them time to really work on their data analysis. My initial approach to this was very structured and that I wanted students to be reading articles every week. I wanted them to be presenting me with certain aspects of their report at certain time points but I realised quickly that it was arbitrary and it didn't help and it just put undue pressure on them when they had a lot of other pressures on already. What I've sort of fallen back on is just a lot of dialogue, a lot of discussion about where they're at and allowing the students to determine timelines that suit them within a bit of a structure.

[End of transcript]

Duration: 6 minutes 02 seconds

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Dr Bonnie McBain

Pilot study's really important because it gives you a gauge for what you might need and what you can learn for the larger study. It often allows you to test out a study and not make the mistakes in the bigger study. So from a statistical perspective, if you have a small data set, it allows you then to check how variable the data is and then allows you to then calculate what sort of sample size you need in order to get a valid result if you were to analyse that on a larger scale.

Silvia Rudmann

For science extension for students is easy and more successful a hands-on project, a firsthand investigation they can actually physically see what they're doing. However, I have very successful secondary data investigations. Students that they are not self-driven and they're not going to sit in front of the computer, doing that analysis from secondary data is difficult. For the students who are more practical, pragmatic, hands-on is better to have actually a firsthand data. The disadvantage of that, it could be that you need a lot of repetitions, you need a lot of time to create a project that is actually reliable and valid in the timeframe that we are for the subject in one year.

Theo

It certainly had its roadblocks and obstacles. I think the primary advantage of doing a firsthand experiment is you can measure exactly what you are looking for. So you can take this variable and directly measure it against this variable. And then from that, you can do your repetition of results. You can do all the necessary things in order to transform and process your data. The problem with secondary investigation is that you are only given what other people have conducted research on. So, obviously, you have to take a lot of reports and a lot of databases and information, you have to condense it, and you have to extract the relevant variables to your data set and then you have to make sure there are no introduced variables. So you've gotta maintain control throughout that process.

Surabhi

My experiment didn't end up being what I wanted it to do. Initially, I was doing a firsthand investigation where I was going to use a Newton spring balance and then drop weights from a height and then measure its force and everything. But when I ended up doing it, didn't give me the results I wanted to and it was really hard to, like, apply that to my question and I was, it was getting a little bit vague in terms of its relation. Then I decided to get my data from a secondary source. So then I looked online and then I thought, "Okay, wait I'm working with microscopic black holes. Why don't I use the actual big black holes, like, the cosmic ones?" So then I looked at the data from an observatory and then I applied that into my equation that I derived and I was able to make a, like, nice connection between the small ones, the small black holes, and the large ones. So that was, like, the big moment for me where I knew exactly what was gonna end up happening in my report and I was like, "Yeah, this is good."

Therese Kanna

When it comes to carrying out the method, it's really about sticking to, like, rigorous scientific principles. You want to make sure that the environment that the experiment is taking place in is fully controlled. That adds to the validity of your experiment and you need to be able to say, "Oh, well, I've repeated this experiment with this many samples or participants," and that just adds to the reliability and over validity of your methodology.

Dr Bonnie McBain

Often it doesn't need to be really sophisticated statistics, it just needs to be high quality statistics. So are they presenting graphs that have got all of the right characteristics of high quality graphs? Are they presenting tables that are really well articulated with high quality data presentation? Science employers are really looking for those really fundamental core skills. So it's the same as the literature review, start off small, start off basic, get an understanding of what's expected and what's high quality, and try and align what you're doing with that and that will set the good foundation for more sophisticated things if you need to do those.

Dr Liam Phelan

Stats is great and so is maths. Everyone should do more maths and I think that, I think what's happening there is you're giving yourself the chance to put a bit more spine, maybe, into the the research that you're doing. In terms of what stats or maths it is that you're going to need, again, I would say, all right, well starting with your research question, what is it that you're wanting to do and what is it that you're wanting to know? And then look at stats as being a bit of a smorgasbord, if you like, and then picking out the bits that you're, the techniques that you're gonna need, the analytical techniques, that are gonna be helpful.

Silvia Rudmann

What I said to the students, I said, "Don't be scared of stats because Excel does it for you. Excel is going to give you a table, Excel is going to tell you the significance of that data and those relationships with the data. That's what you have to learn, how to read through statistics, how to interpret those numbers, how to the numbers talk to you." That's the term that I use with my students. The numbers are telling you a story. That's what you have to learn. Do not be scared of stats because the stats are just numbers.

[End of transcript]

Duration: 8 minutes 02 seconds

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George An

The portfolio is a requirement of the course and something that complements their final scientific research report and it needs to be submitted with their research report. It is like a logbook and it's evidence that you are participating in the research process. Plagiarism is an issue and it's one way to combat that and it's one way to keep students accountable as a part of the course is setting milestones and within your logbook or portfolio, you should have these milestones by this date, we need to be at this point, it's a quick way to identify struggling students and provide that support.

Dr Carina Dennis

In the context of their other courses and many of our students have a huge workload. They'll often take on other extension courses that have major works. Our role is to help them juggle their time, decide when is a really good time to focus on their project and then when can they step back a little bit and maybe focus on one of their other projects or one of their other courses. So we talk a lot about the rhythm of their year in terms of planning. So for students who are going to do a massive amount of data collection, we might talk about when's a really strategic time to do that. And so it's really about planning not just how long something will take but when's a strategic time to invest that time in that particular part of the project.

Tim Smith

Kind of the filter I use for students as to whether or not they're gonna continue with this subject is what they present me after the Christmas holidays at the start of the first term in their second term of Year 12. There's an expectation that if they haven't given me a project or a couple of good well-formed ideas before that holiday that they need to present something to me when they come back. I need to know that they can do the independent research. I need to know that they've got a little bit of a passion project or an area of focus that they're working on.

Kurt Nicholson

The tail end of modules one and two, the later inquiry questions can actually be reduced down to homework. And that can be used to buy actual face-to-face time that can be devoted towards projects.

Dr Carina Dennis

We'll often tailor the teaching of the course depending on the student's projects. In fact, I won't actually decide on the order in which I'm gonna teach it in terms of the details of the syllabus until I know what my students are going to focus on because they might need to know the information around a particular statistical bit of analysis earlier depending on the project.

Joelle Rodrigues

The way I structured the course was so that what I was teaching correlated to where the student would be at with their project. So if we were talking about methodologies or statistics at that point students after learning the material could apply it to their own projects and practise those skills there. We would spend half the time on the project, half the time learning the content.

Dr Carina Dennis

Time management can be quite a challenge in the science extension course. At different points, there's different challenges. At the beginning, it's really about supporting the students to get their focus of their project happening. And I think it's the teacher's role to really help them arrive at that point because you don't really want them sort of flailing around still trying to decide on a focus going into the second term of their project. Towards the end, they're often so passionate and immersed in their project that which is wonderful, but you need to also I have to work to tell 'em when to stop and start writing up their projects that they know that they need to allocate time at the end to be able to do justice to their project.

Kurt Nicholson

And students themselves are their own harshest critic in terms of the quality of their work. And it was a interesting of kind problem to actually see students getting really, really good data, really awesome results. But they were so in the down in the trenches trying to understand how their project works, gather their data, get that last little thing that they wanted to get. They couldn't see that big picture and go, no, no, you need to stop. What you have is awesome.

Surabhi

It's just a question of making sure you find out your question in time to be able to still do the experiment and then be able to like look at what statistical test you need to use and making sure that's all integrated well so you don't have one messing up the other in your report.

Minalu

Definitely planning. It's a very big thing. Having like a schedule, even if it's loose, like weekly I wanna do this and this and this but have it also be flexible and remember that as Ms. Nicholson says, "life happens sometimes." Just being able to adapt to that once you've calmed yourself down and really reaching out to teachers and stuff with more technical issues, like not knowing where your research is going, it really helps 'cause yeah, teacher's always there to help you.

Kurt Nicholson

Scope is a big thing. I do encourage my students to dream big. When we're planning their projects collaboratively at the kind of NIST term for opening stage I'm always looking for kind of points where depending on how long it takes to actually do past the project here's a stopping point, here's a here's the next question past that, have that conversation and then go, right, I need to get out the way. 'cause you've gotta do this.

Minalu

It is just a high school project so it has to stay in the scope of a high school project. I had to learn that like in the middle of my project, I had to change it. I talked to my teacher, Mr. Nicholson a lot because I was quite lost at the start. So he really helped me direct my research. And he's really good at finding good journals and information sources and even ones that are more accessible, less, you know, scientific report like that really helped me understand the basis of the topic I was doing.

Tim Smith

My job really is to be a sounding board so it's to provide guidance with as few answers as possible. So I ask a lot of questions. They come to me, you know, really frustrated. They've been spent a day titrating and the results aren't working. Or they've come up with a new idea and they've put a couple of days into testing it and it didn't work. Those sorts of things, you know, I've, it's a fine line between being sort of reassuring and motivating but also sort of saying, alright, but what are you gonna do next without sort of trying to spoonfeed it. And I don't have the answer most of the time. I've never done it. So it's just a case of, alright, so what are we gonna do next? How are we gonna fix this? What can we try next? And just trying to stay positive and keep them motivated. It can be a little bit challenging sometimes, but it, I think that it's just where you get a relationship with students fairly quickly and that can be that's one of the most rewarding aspects of the course too. It's just being able to work with someone through all these and watch them develop that resilience.

Kurt Nicholson

I would almost do a little newsletter each week where I was saying, okay, here are, here's the class list, here's all the different names. it'll be productive for you to look at this. And that would let me as the teacher essentially wander around the room and help students problem solve, be able to target different things where people were stuck.

Tim Smith

There's a lot of dead ends and that's okay because every time we reach one we can just go we've ticked that off, now we move on to the next. And it's always progress. I think that's the way to always talk about it is it's, you know, things, a lot of things don't make it but the one that does is gonna be really good because we've tested everything. It's a team project. So my job's to be available, it's to be on call. The students are working a lot independently in the lab. They have to be, otherwise they can't get it done. And I think that process, I think the students seeing teachers have to solve problems is really, really good because it's not something to be afraid of. It's not something that's wrong, it's just the process.

[End of transcript]

Duration: 6 minutes 09 seconds

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Silvia Rudmann

The value of the mentor is they open doors to the students to see that we are doing real science, right, because usually, those mentors put the students in their own lines of research at the university so the students can link to that. I think the value as well for a mentor is for those teachers or schools that they are not strong in research or the teacher doesn't have a strong research background from previous careers so the mentor can guide them.

Dr Devika Kamath

Having a mentor is critical because it's like, it's the person who shows you the door to the next step. We're not doing it for them. We're just telling them that this is how you do it and then they of course, they take their own efforts and their interests ahead.

Owen

I think having a mentor is really important because just having someone to have a second look at what your data's like, right, because there's so many different ways to interpret information to try and make sense of it.

George An

It's kind of amazing what the mentors can provide for the students 'cause usually mentors are associated with universities. Universities have access to equipment and in the case of one of my students, they were accessing data from a satellite that other scientists around the world would not even have access to at that point and so a science student in Year 12 accessing this exclusive data and performing an experiment is kinda mind blowing.

Dr Carina Dennis

They get to find a mentor or another researcher who is just as passionate about the particular thing that they're really into and I think that that's a unique opportunity. They don't really get that in any other course where they've got someone with the same level of passion as well as expertise to be able to stretch them further than they can normally be stretched in a secondary environment.

Kurt Nicholson

If we can find an expert in the field and they're willing to actually put the time into the student, that is spectacular but also capitalising on the skillset of the people around you.

Ritu Bhamra

Mentors can be really, really helpful but it's not necessary like many of my students they didn't have mentors and they worked with their drive, the passion and as a group, we all work together. So the resources around the school, there is depth of knowledge and experience there. I think that should be the first point that we should be exploring.

Therese Kanna

The teacher was included on all email correspondence which was our primary method of communication between me and my mentee. So they were always aware of what we were discussing, how the student was tracking the kind of advice that I was giving.

Dr Jiao Jiao Li

So I think from a mentor's point of view like having the school support the student as much as the mentor does is a really important component so it would be really useful if there was a science teacher who was allocated to the student and participating in all the regular meetings with the mentor just to make sure that the mentor is good at like what I did was to guide the student in their project progress and what kind of milestones they had to achieve by a certain period of time but then it was really up to the school to make sure that the student was ticking the boxes in terms of their requirements for the subject and for the project.

Joseph

During our meetings, she would take minutes of what we talked about and then she attached relevant links as well and then emailed it all to me and that was really helpful because I have a short memory span so looking back and having that sort of reference was very useful.

Silvia Rudmann

The issue with the mentor sometimes is that for some mentors, they still cannot go down to high school level and the kids get lost or the kids sometimes drop the subject because they think that it's too difficult. I was selective with the mentors that I can offer to the students because of that level of research that they are offering that I can see that it's not going to be achievable for the students in one year.

William

In terms of the project, like just being able to I guess meet like a university lecturer and also meet a group of PhD students that I also was able to talk to online to discuss my project was also was very insightful and it was essentially my first time interacting with someone at that level of knowledge and specialisation.

Dr Bonnie McBain

Being a mentor is probably one of the most amazing experiences you can have. It can have some unexpected benefits. The first is you probably end up learning more than your mentee does. It's also a really amazing opportunity to communicate the enthusiasm you have and the passion that you have for what it is you do and infect someone else with that.

Therese Kanna

Going on that journey with the young scientist really deepens my appreciation for the scientific process and helped me translate 'cause I saw how she was navigating certain problems and challenges and it gave me ideas on how I can navigate certain issues that I was facing and outlining well, this is how you write the report and this, like you have to be clear and concise and your writing should be both effective and efficient just reminded me oh, well, that's what I need for my report.

Dr Jiao Jiao Li

I think it was a really enriching experience. So I always have a passion for working with high school students because I wanna inspire more of the Me to STEM careers and so getting to work quite closely with these bright and talented kids and seeing their interest in science and doing my bit to be able to inspire them to hopefully go onto a scientific career path is something that is very rewarding to me.

[End of transcript]

Duration: 6 minutes 04 seconds

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Ann Hanna

For us, it began with the depth studies, actually, in Year 11, we ran open-ended depth studies and every student was conducting their own research in the topic that we were studying. At the time, it was enzymes. It was just buzzing, everyone was so excited and people were working in groups and collaborating. Out of that experience, our first class formed for Science Extension and a lot of those students took what they'd learnt in their depth studies into bigger fuller research project, having been inspired by that process

Joelle Rodrigues

But selling it to the kids, I said, "This is gonna really help you later on, especially if you're going into research or you are going into a degree in science, or any subject and you're gonna have to practise these skills, you're gonna be well prepared.

Ann Hanna

I think the best resource is actually previous students' portfolios and research reports. So we start the course by presenting those and we get the research proposal posters out. We put them all around the room and we give the new class an opportunity to engage with those and to have a look at the journeys. They give students ideas, they show them what it's like to hit hurdles and what sorts of opportunities there are as far as mentorships. It's all these sorts of things that really make it successful.

Dr Carina Dennis

There's been a number of different resources that I've relied heavily on. I think the ones provided by the department that focus on particular components of the syllabus that aren't touched on in other courses has been really, really helpful. The statewide staff room, the channel for Science Extension has been brilliant, teachers sharing resources there has been great. There's a Facebook group for science extension. There's a lot of readily available university material building that bridge into university, so we're often using statistical material that they'll probably encounter in their first year undergraduate course.

Ann Hanna

There are some really strong networks out there for teachers. Schools in your local area that might be running it are a good place to reach out and just have those communications between teachers. In my network of schools, we actually take students for each other when there's not sufficient numbers at one school to run.

Dr Carina Dennis

I think what makes a good science extension teacher is having a true curiosity for what the students want to investigate and an enthusiasm for what they want to investigate. With my students, I really work hard to have a very open, I tell 'em, I'm really upfront about, you know, what I do know and what I can help them with in terms of content or data analysis, but being really quick to say "this is outside my area of expertise. Let's go ask another teacher in the faculty, or let's find out who would be a good external expert who could support you in this."

Silvia Rudmann

You don't have to have a PhD to teach science extension and that is important for a lot of teachers to understand that they are just teaching the subject for the first time. Right, science extension is that passion for research to do actually a science degree later on. That is my aim, to inspire the students to go and pursue a career in science.

Ann Hanna

It's really important to make sure that you set achievable benchmarks and set that timeline in a considered and practical way. One way I help with that is I space out assessment tasks so that they don't hit any other subject assessment task and that way I try to make it as easy as possible for the students to be able to focus on the science extension research when they need to.

Kurt Nicholson

You are, by doing science extension, dealing with your best and brightest of the year. They are going to have a huge number of things going on throughout their entire school life, but also, you know personal life and everything else. What you need to do is potentially put together a format where you have students independently engaging with parts of the course and all able to work at their own pace through the different sections of the course because that enables you to move around amongst the cohort and be able to actually address problems as they arise.

Ann Hanna

So the science extension classroom is really informal. We become like a team of researchers. I encourage everybody to work and collaborate on each of their projects. So they'll help each other collect data and, you know, you hold different pieces of equipment for each other and it's a real journey that we all go on together, mimicking, again, collaboration in the real scientific world.

Dr Carina Dennis

We double mark all of our assessments so that we know that the students are getting judges that are coming from different perspectives who will have an opportunity to review and discuss the work together. The other thing we have is a marking criteria that's based on the actual Young Scientist Awards, which is run by the Science Teachers Association of New South Wales. It's a great marking rubric because it really does look at the process of the project.

Ann Hanna

So what we like to do at the end of the science extension journey is we invite our students to present in the evening to parents and interested students for the following year. These kids are doing real research. They're producing journal-quality papers at the end of it and they've worked really hard to get there. So it's really important to be able to celebrate that as a school, as a community, to show their parents what their children have done. Often I hear from parents, "I had no idea they were so capable." And then they get the opportunity to answer questions for the incoming class, and that way we promote the culture of science and investigation. We celebrate the success and students can look up to those older mentors each year.

[End of transcript]

Duration: 4 minutes 31 seconds

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Montana

For my Science Extension project, I did the ability of mealworms to digest polystyrene. Like, in my HSIE years, I was doing chemistry and biology. So I, like, was brainstorming about that. And then, I also brought in the, like, environmental aspect as well. So I think, like, that topic of, like, incorporating the environment, and, like, subjects I was doing in school already, it really helped me, like, continually engage with the topic that I was doing.

Kurt Nicholson

Interest is probably the priority, 'cause interest is what's going to carry them through the ups and downs of doing their project.

Montana

So a lot of it was, like, online research, like, using websites like Google Scholar and stuff like that. They really helped me access, like, what past people had done, and where the, like, area of research currently was. And it helped me, like, pick kind of a new aspect to, like, research, to, like, add to that what's already been there. There wasn't too much existing information about it. So, like, coming up with a methodology from the little, like, current, like, research papers that were there, was a little bit hard to do, but I found it, like, challenging to kind of just set down like, a methodology that I was gonna do. So I kind of like with my mealworms, I did, like, a kind of test run, like in the holidays, I kind of like bought just, like, a small scale thing to do at home to just like, kind of like, test run what I was gonna do in, like, my actual one, to make sure I could, like, do it right, and not stuff everything up. After every class I did, I, like, wrote down what I did. I kind of like summarised the main stuff that I got done, and then what I wanted to do the next lesson. For my final report, it was really good to look back, and be like, "Oh, this is what, like, my process was," to help me write, like, methodology.

Kurt Nicholson

Well, organisation is a really important part, and being, like, aware of when there will be those pressure points is really, really critical.

Montana

I think it was, like, once a term, we kind of like set down, like a probably half an hour to just sit down one-on-one, and, like, talk about what we're doing, like how are your reports going and stuff like that. Just to like sit down, and be like, "This is where I'm up to. This is where I think I'm going. Like, do you have any advice for me?" That really, really helped me. The whole, like, statistics testing aspect was where I probably got the most help from my teacher. I was like, "Oh, like, I don't really know what I'm doing with all these numbers." But he kind of like gave me, like a point to start, and then, like, "This is what you can do from here, and, like, here's how you organise it." I used Excel to put all my data in, and then I got my, like, results from that, and then I could build my conclusion from there. So it was very helpful. So originally, my whole, like, project was gonna be like getting a first generation of beetles, and then, like, creating a second generation as well, and then I kind of realised, "Oh, that'll take a very long time to do." So I kind of had to scrap that. You start out big, and then you hone it into, like, what you can actually get done in the time. My teacher gave us access to past, like, science extension reports, and they were like really helpful to just, like, see like what level of writing you kind of had to write at, and, like, they helped break everything down as well, like what you had to include in each section.

Kurt Nicholson

So I encourage them to use academic language, but I also encourage them to be very focused on using simple and clear language.

Montana

By the end I'm like, "Oh yeah, like, I feel like I've made a report that I'm proud of," and, like, I can like compare it to that, and be like, "Oh that's pretty good, actually." So it was really helpful, like, just every step of the way, I guess to like see what other people are doing, and know that you're not doing anything wrong, I guess.

Kurt Nicholson

With Science Extension, you get to actually have students engage for an entire year on a long-term project. What is really telling is that the types of projects that students are able to do lets them really get at that basic fundamental science, and lets them actually engage on that authentic level, and that's just really, really good.

Montana

So I've just finished my first year of uni, and, like, a lot of the information that I got from that transfers over into university courses, so it was very helpful for me personally.

[End of transcript]

Duration: 5 minutes 39 seconds

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Vincent

I chose Science Extension because I've always been interested about what a career in science research would be like. So I thought that that would be the most authentic way to find out. In my research project, I investigated solar proton events, so they occur when you have solar eruptions that accelerate protons and these protons can hit the Earth and cause environmental damage and be damaging to satellites and other technologies on Earth. I think narrowing down the topic was probably the hardest part of the entire project. So it was quite difficult to try to find something within an area of science that I enjoyed and found interesting, but also making sure that it was feasible with our resources and time. In my project, I tried to use data of the magnetic field of the sun to predict how the magnitude of these events when they arrived at Earth. So I think with secondary investigations, I think teachers need to help students think about what data sets are out there and try to help them ask questions that can be answered using those data sets, rather than just thinking of questions and designing experiment to address it. When I was looking at the literature, I sort of looked at what things were out there, like the topics, and then I also looked at the methodologies and then I sort of, like, paired the two together and finding a topic which I found interesting and a methodology which I could see was somewhat feasible. ♪ Hey ♪ Well, I think not having a mentor made me more independent in that I would have to be effectively forced to figure out problems on my own. It really helped me try to figure out solutions by myself.

Dr Carin Dennis

We try very, very hard to have mentors for all our students. That's not always been possible. It's just sometimes just not feasible because the students' particular project is just not aligned with that for a mentor that's available because we really encourage our students to follow their passion because that will drive them through to the end.

Vincent

So I think by studying technology courses, it made me more confident in using coding and software to do the data analysis because I think if I hadn't done the course, I wouldn't be that experienced in those sorts of skills and it might've drawn me away from answering this sort of question. In terms of the report, my teacher helped us by asking us to submit a draft a few weeks before the report was due, so that meant that I had to start thinking about it earlier. So after I received the feedback from the draft, there was ample time to make the required adjustments. I quite enjoyed the exam because it was quite, I guess, interactive. I liked how they give you different stimuli and then you need to try and extract as much information as you can from those stimuli, rather than it being a more rote learning based course and just memorising and answering questions based on the knowledge that you've taken into the exam. ♪ Hey ♪

Dr Carin Dennis

The exciting thing about science extension is that it is learning how to do science in a way that you don't do it in any other course and in, particularly, around learning to fail and what to do when that happens. Most science doesn't work the first time. In fact, most of it fails the first time. And so for these students, they have an opportunity for them to learn how to deal with the frustration of setting up an experiment and it doesn't work and it doesn't work again, may not work for months and how to approach that. In fact, one of my students, his entire project didn't actually give the outcome that he was hoping for. In that sense, it didn't work, and yet, his projects was one of the best. In fact, he won the Early Young Scientist Award for his work. But really developing that mindset of being a scientist, I think is a unique experience in the science extension course.

Vincent

I won second place in the Young Scientist Year 11-12 Physics category for scientific investigations. Because I won an award for it, it made me more comfortable that even if it's a negative result, something that might not be traditionally seen as interesting within the scientific community, it gave me reassurance that that is still, in itself, developing scientific knowledge.

I think science extension would definitely be valuable moving forward because it's equipped me with skills that I wouldn't learn in the other science courses.

Dr Carin Dennis

The students have become much more interested in the course because they are seeing the linkages it builds with universities. So, particularly, the new students who are enrolling they're looking at the older students and they've seen how they've used enrollment in the course and completing their project as a talking point in job interviews and in scholarship applications and also giving those students a sense of what it's gonna be like to go to university and work with professors and mentors there. So I think that's really stimulated a lot of interest in the course as well.

Vincent

I think it did live up to expectations and it also allowed me to think about science in a way that I hadn't thought about previously because with module one and the ethics and different ways of thinking, it allowed me to think about how science is developed and the ways of thinking that go behind it. ♪ Hey ♪

[End of transcript]

Duration: 6 minutes 03 seconds

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Sarah

For my project, I looked at how the metabolism of cancer cells changes under different concentrations of lactate. So I'm really interested in cancer research and cell biology but also sports science. This was a way that I could really combine those areas of interest together into one project. At the start, we had a research proposal which was a poster and a speech for our idea that we had to present to our teacher. So that was a big point where I had to narrow down what I was doing, the ideas. All throughout the year, I would go back to it and go back to the initial ideas and the timeline. Yeah, it was really helpful. A lot of the articles that I needed access to were paid and that was really challenging at first, but my teacher knew a website, SciHub, and that was really helpful because they had unlocked access to a lot of the journal articles. The terminology was quite hard to understand and also hard to know what papers were true. I found some of them were quite contradictory of each other. So I just kept reading and kept reading from all different sources and really isolating the words and looking into what they meant. The word limit was something I really struggled with 'cause there was so much that I wanted to talk about and really narrowing it down, that was quite challenging. So my chemistry teacher, she looked over it and edited it and also friends. So it was a mini peer review process and that was really helpful. I found this machine that I really wanted to use which I thought was really cool. And then we actually contacted someone from the company in Vitro who manufactures the machines and he gave me a few researchers at universities that I could contact. I was really surprised, so many got back and were like, "Yes we can help you, yes," and everyone was just really open-minded and it was really exciting to have so many people willing to help.

Ann Hanna

Sarah was able to find a mentor at the Garvan who then was so impressed with her idea that he conducted the research for her and provided the data and then we were able to visit again and have a tour of the facility and also see the equipment that she used. She's been really inspired by the whole journey, it's exciting.

- Yeah, my teacher was really helpful in collaborating with my mentor and e-mailing him and what to say and how to organise these things, yeah.

- You don't really understand until you start to engage with the process, just how willing people are to help students doing research. When they hear that we are a high school, so there's a lot of support out there and we just have to ask.

Sarah

So I quite literally put everything in my log book, every thought that I had. Yet, had my first lesson today, these are the ideas that I have. Also, annotated all my articles and printed them out and highlighted them and then scanned them and attached 'em to the end of my logbook, tying it together at the end. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't had it all written down somewhere. My experiment used a machine, a Seahorse XF Analyzer which measures oxygen consumption rate and extracellular acidification rate in cancer cells. I came across a paper which was very similar to my project and where I draw a lot of the inspiration from and I just followed a very similar methodology for that, but also collaborated a lot with my mentor and he was able to help me with the fine details. I wasn't able to go in-person to do the experiment. So he did it and sent me the results and then I came in after the report was finished to see it. Don't get too stuck in trying to understand the maths behind the statistics, but really just make sure you have good understanding of what they're telling you, what they're producing and how you can use that and what's statistical test is best-suited for your results. I did look at two other students' reports and they were really helpful, that had done quite well in the subject. I just made a document with all those headings and throughout the year, as I was reading literature, I drafted my literature review many, many times and then as my methodology was finalised, I drafted that and added it in there. I also had the marking criteria which is really helpful, which our teacher broke down. It was outta 80 and it was one mark for each point. So I was able to align that with the past students' reports and just see how they wrote in past tense and all that just little details like that. When the report was due, it was after trials and preparing for the HSE. So it was quite hard to manage the time, but our teacher was very good and she planned all our assignments so they wouldn't clash with other big subjects. Obviously, it is quite stressful 'cause you only have a year to do it. But yeah, just rolling with it and see where the experiment takes you. Something, you just gotta trust the process and that even if your results don't support your hypothesis, you'll still have something to talk about.

Ann Hanna

I think it's very helpful and probably essential to have time management skills. But I think you also have to be really determined and super resilient to get through the course. We have yet to have a year, so I've been teaching it since 2019 and every year, there are some tears and there are some cheers of celebration, and it's this rollercoaster of a ride that really mimics the authentic scientific research journey.

Sarah

I picked the subject 'cause I was really interested in science, but not really knowing that I would wanna do research in the future. And I guess, through this subject and my teacher's very passionate about it, I was able to be like, "Oh yeah, this is really cool." It was definitely worthwhile and now I know that's what I wanna do in the future as well.

[End of transcript]