Members of a research team from the University of Minnesota came to Fairmont Area Schools on Friday to spend time in several sixth, seventh and eighth grade science classrooms.

Lucas Simpson, a 2018 graduate of Fairmont High School, is now in his second year at University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Simpson is a research assistant for the Department of Educational Psychology- ESPRIT project under lead investigator, Dr. Keisha Varma.

The name of the project stands for Fostering Equitable Science though Parent Involvement and Technology and the project focuses on student engagement, parent involvement and technology in science education. They’re working with science because classes funding for the ESPRIT project is through the National Science Foundation.

This is the third year of the study but the first year that they’re working with Fairmont. Fairmont is the first and only school outside of metro schools to be included in the project. Simpson advocated for for rural schools to be included in the project, specifically Fairmont.

“Lucas has been instrumental in getting Fairmont school to join,” said another member of the research team.

They’re currently in the first phase of the project with Fairmont, which is the consent and assent process to get permission from both parents and students to get access to data.

Simpson will be coming back monthly to observe in the classrooms and collect data. He is the youngest student working on the project, the six others are either masters students or PhD students.

In a nutshell, Simpson said the goal of the project is to “encourage parent involvement in science classrooms and to strengthen the relationship between teachers, parents and students.”

The teachers participating in the project are Anne Holm, Brad Haugen, Jim Buss, Kevin Kristenson, Steve Lebert, Kari Duehlmeyer and Greg Maday.

Holm said they went to the University of Minnesota for a week this summer where members of the research team led them in training for using Flipgrid and developing prompts.

Flipgrid was developed by a professor at the University of Minneosta who wanted more engagement in his class. Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to create “grids” to facilitate video discussions. Each grid is like a message board where teachers can pose questions and their students can post video responses that appear in a tiled grid display.

Members of the research team will take the flip grid responses, watch it and transcribe the words the students are using. They will be looking for keywords to determine how students engage in the science content.

“They’re looking at how technology, specifically social technology, can be used in science education to help increase engagement with students and help them have some science discourse and also bring families onboard in what we’re learning in science,” Holm explained.

The next prompt is for students to interview parents and ask them how they use data in their personal or professional life, and then how do they make sense of it.

“The students have been working with data and learning how to make sense of and analyze data,” Holm explained.

“When we can show students how they can connect to the real world with what we’re learning in science, that really helps them,” Holm said.

Holm said there are several benefits of Fairmont participating in the project. One is that it has helped her gain more understanding of working with students of different cultures and backgrounds.

“This is an opportunity for me to use new technology in my classroom that helps amplify student voice,” Holm said.