As Duke works to ensure that its students develop into active learners and involved citizens, an
increasing number of undergraduates will undertake independent research.  Mentoring these apprentice
investigators, while worthwhile and rewarding, will increase demands on Duke faculty.  Engaging students as competent and ethically aware researchers is necessarily time-intensive, as students require careful and ongoing advice to effectively plan, implement, and complete research.

With this in mind, this project will develop a series of multimedia modules to aid faculty in efforts to educate students about ethical conduct in researching human subjects. Several modules will be tailored to meet needs as identified by faculty, such as: cultural sensitivity, private versus public information, subject rights, risks and information consent, and vulnerable subjects. The modules will also emphasize the global reach of students’ activities and draw attention to the need to craft research protocols so that they are appropriate for the particular cultural context in which they will be undertaken.

Project start date: 4/21/2008
Funding awarded: $$19,860

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Project summary

Julie has found that students with very little prior knowledge of science can participate in authentic scientific research, can be trained to collect meaningful scientific data, and can develop a better understanding of ecological processes and the interconnectedness of nature through these experiences. Building on this success, she is expanding a current project to engage members of the community in an authentic scientific study. She is developing educational activities around invasive species at the Eno River State Park, and training the public to be involved in monitoring these species. She plans to include the general public as well as service groups at high schools, colleges, and in the community (such as through botanical societies) that would encourage sustained participation in scientific research.

The goals of this project are to:

1. Increase public understanding of threats to the environment and to biodiversity
2. Educate the public about the scientific method
3. Foster a sense of environmental stewardship within the community
4. Monitor the spread of invasive plant species within the state park

Visitors to the Eno River State Park will be trained to monitor invasive plants using GPS and gathering data in Google Earth. This project at the Eno River could serve as a pilot to be adopted throughout North Carolina.

See Julie’s Citizen Scientist website for more.

This project is funded by Duke Center for Science Education.

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Project Description:

Merrill Shatzman is in the early stages of creating a new course, “Personal Geographics: Mapping Self Identity”, that will be taught in Spring or Fall 2009. The course, based on traditional printmaking techniques, will focus on combining digital techniques with printmaking and involve faculty from other science and social science disciplines to encourage students to consider new ways that data visualization and mapping are used in personal inquiry and expression.

CIT Strategic Grant funding has been awarded to Shatzman to assist with development of the course. The funding will be used for a student assistant and other expenses to help Shatzman learn more advanced methods with digital graphics tools such as Photoshop and InDesign and to develop help materials, such as short video screen captures, that can be used for reference by students as they use computer graphics and visualization tools in conjunction with more traditional printmaking techniques.

Project start date: 5/22/2008
Funding awarded: $1,800

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Project Description

Julie Reynolds and research associate David Shiffman have compared ArcGIS and Google Earth for undergraduate research projects. ArcGIS is a powerful program, but is very expensive and difficult to learn. Google Earth has fewer analytical tools, but is free and very user friendly. Using data generated by student research projects, David compared the capabilities of both programs.

ArcGIS is undeniably a more powerful tool, but it has several drawbacks. The expense and difficulty of learning ArcGIS makes it impractical for short-term, small-scale projects. Google Earth, in contrast, is powerful enough for small-scale projects such as undergraduate research projects and large mapping project that do not require quantitative analysis.

These results are being prepared for publication, and will be used to guide future undergraduate research projects.

Below, left image was created in ArcGIS, image on the right is the same data in Google Earth.

Project start date: 4/1/2008
Funding awarded: $1800

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Project Description

In Gereffi’s Marketing and Management capstone course, undergraduate students collect and analyze data involving several key North Carolina industries, helping Gereffi and his team (the Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness) create visualizations like value chains and maps for the public and highly-visible North Carolina and the Global Economy website.

CIT is providing funding and support to help Gereffi and his team develop interactive representations of value chains using tools like Flash, and to explore the use of mapping tools like Google Earth to rethink the way industry data can be presented visually in a more global context. The resulting developments will in turn create more and varied projects for undergraduate students in Gereffi’s capstone course.

Project Started: May 4, 2007
Funding: $11,000

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Project Description

CIT is providing Trudi Abel with funding and student support to create and integrate several historical maps of Durham into a set of Google Earth files that will increase the integration of real-world research into her courses. Additional development will be done on Google Earth files to prepare them for students to add audio pieces (collected via iPods, many of which have already been created as a result of a DDI project) and create geotagged photography with standard GPS equipment, digital cameras, and geotagging software.

Abel also plans to incorporate the resulting developments into the Digital Durham website/project, Ultimately, Abel would like to see several old maps of Durham (including several fire maps) located in Google Earth and presented in a timeline/tour to illustrate the changes/changing of Durham. For more on Digital Durham, see this Duke article.

Here is a web video of Trudi Abel talking about her class and their participation in the Duke Digital Initiative:

Project Started: May 4, 2007
Funding: $1650

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Project description

To introduce authentic research methods and give students practice in research, students in the Methods Primate Field Ecology course used three Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking collars to track primates at the Duke University Lemur Center. Combining these data with Google Earth would illustrate the lemur’s use of three-dimensional space.

The GPS collars were placed on three lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center during the Fall 2007 semester, but none of the collars functioned and no data was collected. Replacement collars are expected. This authentic research experience allowed students to gain first hand experience in the challenges of field work and cutting edge technology. When the tracking collars are replaced, other students will participate in this research experience. Below, lemurs with tracking collars.

Project start date: 5/4/2007
Funding awarded: $3,200

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