Nicole is one of my teacher education students who was interested in what her fellow college students' factual knowledge was about climate change. Her study will randomly survey students at our college about their climate change knowledge, and then use that data to create a 2-credit college level course about the subject.
Stephanie was a student in the nursing program that was interested in the use of sign language to communicate with children in the NICU. I was able to utilize my early childhood expertise to guide Stephanie towards valid research and practice in the area of sign language communication. Together we constructed a research project where she would interview NICU nurses about their preferred communication strategies with their patients, and specifically focused on those who use or wish to use sign language.
Jacqueline had taken my ED 225 (Technology in Education) course, and was interested in studying the correlation between student media use and academic success. Together we developed a research plan that involved providing a questionnaire to students about what types of media they use in their personal time and how often they use it. She then viewed their academic transcripts and developed hypotheses about the connection between the different media use and length of use, and student academic success. Jacqueline also utilized the collaborative tools in Microsoft Office online to share and edit her work with me, which gave her further practice in working digitally and collaboratively online. She was able to ask for and obtain feedback from me quickly and see my notes and edits in real time as she worked.
Caitlin was one of my early childhood students and was interested in further studying early literacy experiences. Specifically, she was interested in the types of early literacy experiences that were happening in young children's homes, how often they happened and how they correlated with the children's literacy skills in the classroom. Together we developed a research plan that involved surveying family members and then connecting the data to research on children's early literacy development.