Co-creation of CERN OpenData projects with UK school students - pilot study

Lead Research Organisation: University of Oxford
Department Name: Oxford Physics

Abstract

This pilot project will bring cutting-edge CERN OpenData science into UK classrooms. The citizens performing the science will be UK school students and their teachers, assisted by researchers in UK universities and Institute for Research in Schools. It will be the students themselves, assisted by university researchers, who will be the scientists. They will, together with teachers and researchers, generate scientific objectives, develop tools and methodology, perform analysis and present results. In short the students will be undertaking a full spectrum of scientific activities, and leading their own research using data from the world's highest energy particle collider.

Technical Summary

This pilot project will bring cutting-edge CERN OpenData science into UK classrooms. The citizens performing the science will be UK school students aged 16-18 and their teachers, assisted by researchers in UK universities and the Institute for Research in Schools. Crucially it will be the students themselves who will be the citizen scientists. They will, with mentoring from teachers and researchers at UK universities, generate scientific objectives, develop tools and methodology, perform analysis, and present results. In short the students will be undertaking a full spectrum of scientific activities, and leading their own research using data from the world's highest-energy particle collider.

Planned Impact

This pilot is intended to be the first stage in a larger project that will bring CERN OpenData to a wide range of UK schools nationwide.

We anticipate that the outputs from the pilot project will deliver the following outcomes:

For the students: involvement in this pilot project has the potential to deliver a broad spectrum of outcomes, for example:
* Knowledge - deepening understanding of the role of researchers and the work undertaken at CERN, increasing knowledge of particle physics
* Skills - enhancing ability in information management, communication and scientific enquiry
* Attitudes and values - developing attitudes towards particle physics research, CERN researchers, and researcher institutions
* Creativity - developing exploration, experimentation and innovative thoughts regarding CERN OpenData
* Progression - developing aspirations regarding physics and STEM as career paths

For the teachers: this pilot project will support teachers with their teaching of Physics A-level (particle physics is a core element of the Physics National Curriculum at A-level). It will also enrich their personal understanding of particle physics research through the CPD component of the masterclasses.

Publications

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Description The pilot project has demonstrated that there is an appetite for analysis of CERN Open Data by UK school students. We have found that with suitable resources available to them UK school students can understand the physics background, learn the necessary coding skills and perform sophisticated analysis of that data. The students also indicated enthusiasm for taking the next steps in performing independent analysis of open-ended research questions with the data.
Exploitation Route A partnership has been formed between IRIS, RAL and Oxford which aims to deliver a larger-scale pilot using joint resources, and then to roll out a large-scale national programme.
Sectors Education
 
Description Report: Co-creation of CERN OpenData projects with UK school students - pilot study Grant Ref: BB/T018534/1 PI: Professor Alan Barr, University of Oxford Dates: (Initially) 1 January 2020-30 April 2020 Duration: 4 months End date following no-cost extension 30 April 2021 (see Appendix 1) Introduction The aims of the overall ATLAS OpenData co-creation project are to raise STEM aspirations; developing scientific enquiry skills; develop technical skills; and to engage underrepresented groups in STEM subjects. The vehicle through which this engagement is being undertaken is through mentored engagement with school students, with the students developing and addressing questions in the OpenData provided by the ATLAS experiment at CERN. The objectives of the funded pilot project were to: • Survey and evaluate existing use of CERN Open Data within the target age range • Co-create a small number of projects with one or more local UK schools • Identify any barriers to wider participation • Determine the steps needed for the roll-out of a large-scale schools' programme Adaptation of plans to COVID restrictions The mechanism foreseen to deliver these objectives was a two-day Masterclass, to be held in-person in the University of Oxford, and held in conjunction with the International Particle Physics Masterclass. The event which would bring together researchers, teachers, students and mentors. The event was scheduled for the dates 24-27 March 2020, and was been fully planned, organised, and ready to run. By the beginning of March 2020 all the speakers and activities had been arranged, travel arrangements made, computing resources allocated and tested, mentors trained, and students registered to attend. Then, on 10th March, with concerns over COVID-19 escalating throughout the country, and with cases of Covid-19 reported in the University of Oxford, the decision was made by the University of Oxford to cancel almost all external events. With deep regret we made the decision on 10th March 2020 to postpone the two events with the hope that it might be able to achieve the objectives of the grant through an in-person event later in the year. A six-month no-cost extension to the grant was sought and agreed from RCUK with the hope that the event might occur in September 2020. During summer 2020 it became clear that the pandemic would not be over rapidly, and that there would be very appetite amongst teachers or students for travel for an in-person event in Oxford that September. It also became clear that with much teaching time lost, teachers preferred to priorities curricular rather than extra-curricular activities early in the 2020/2021 academic year. Despite the circumstances we were determined to deliver as many of the objectives of the grant as possible. Teaching had moved to remote-learning methods, and so we decided to use the same methods for our Masterclass, and to hold the OpenData co-creation event during the period 17th to 19th March 2021, immediately after the 2021 Particle Physics Schools International Masterclass, which had also moved to an online format. Reorganising the event was not straightforward. In the interim period since the event had originally been planned one key staff member had changed, providing a challenge in continuity, while other staff members and mentors were stretched due to caring responsibilities, additional Covid-related work, and both Covid-and non-Covid related serious illnesses. Nevertheless, the team worked hard to completely re-organised the event into an online format, ready to deliver in March 2021. No additional resource was sought nor provided. Some savings in travel expenditure were reallocated to obtaining the tools needed for online delivery in a manner consistent with safeguarding for minors. Pilot events The anticipated experts/best practice session was arranged for 17th March 2021. Twenty attendees from CERN, from UK and international universities, national laboratories, and from IRIS, the Institute for Research in Schools, came together and shared best practice of the state-of-the-art in bringing OpenData to schools around the world. This event brought together researchers involved in public engagement with OpenData, and was key to assembling the team that will take the project to the next level in the coming academic year. Key lessons from participants at that event included the need for sustained engagement to achieve real co-creation of research, an understanding of student motivation, and an understanding of which groups might have complementary teaching resources. On 16th and 18th March we arranged an event for students from UK schools to attend lectures and online tutorials at the International Particle Physics Masterclass. We followed this on 19th March with an online mentored discussion, and an online exercise in which the mentors led the school students through exercises such that they could: • Use and modify Python programming language • Create, fill, and interpret histograms of data from the Large Hadron Collider • Interpret the results and propose new investigations on the data The students, having already been introduced to the concepts of particle physics in the International Masterclass, were all already equipped with the background knowledge in particle physics required to understand the exercises. There was considerable range of experience in computing and coding amongst the students, so exercises were divided up according the bullet-points above, allowing several different starting points depending on the background of the student. This structure proved to be helpful to the students, who could proceed at their own pace within their mentored group. Attendees The event was advertised on the Oxford physics department website, and through teacher contacts maintained by the schools and outreach team. A total of 39 students applied, all of whom met the criteria for the session. From those 15 students were selected for the pilot session, providing a cross-section of of school type, geographic distribution and gender balance. Outcomes & lessons learned The taster session was, in very large part, a success. The expected students attended, and the technology worked well. MS Teams with break-out rooms provided no significant difficulties as a teaching technology. The custom-written jupyter coding notebooks allowed a variety of entry-points for different levels of coding experience. Running the event after a Particle Physics masterclass also worked well since it provided the necessary subject knowledge to the students. Overall the students were highly engaged, reported learning a lot, and were excited and interested by the project. The most problematic issue for the students was the timing of the sessions, which had occurred during the school day. The students proposed that future sessions happen outside school hours, so that they didn't clash with school lessons. On the technology side, the pilot session went well with no technical problems on the day. Setting up the jupyter server, and preparing the associated ROOT software and downloads of OpenData did require considerable effort to set up from an experienced IT professional from the Oxford Physics Department. Server maintenance issues cut short the possibility for follow-up sessions when that individual became unavailable through illness, highlighting the need to integrate the operation of the server within a larger scale operation which could provide more continuity of service even when individual support staff are unavailable. The students were surveyed soon after the event by the department's schools' liaison officerOf the nine responders four reported that the session was "Good" and five that it was "Very good". All reported high confidence about being able to undertake a project with CERN Open Data after the session. The students reported enjoying the small-group work, the mentoring and the ability to discuss their questions with the mentors, all of whom were researchers working on the Large Hadron Collider. The students reported gaining insight into particle physics, and enjoying the feeling of doing a real research project, something new and as-yet unexplored. They all would have been keen to continue with the project for longer, had that been possible. No potential issues related to safeguarding arose. Thought will need to be given as to how mentoring can proceed in a larger-scale project when many schools and potentially many hundreds of students are participating. Partnerships created For the delivery of the next stage of the project, a collaboration has been formed between three UK partners: IRIS (the Institute for Research in Schools), the University of Oxford's Department of Physics, and the Particle Physics group of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, a branch of the UK Science and Technology. RAL and IRIS were participants in the practitioners' event in March 2021, and observers in the schools' taster session. The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) has the computing server resources needed for the next steps of the project, and we plan to make use of these for the future states of the project. Resources created A set of Jupiter notebooks which access and analyse CERN OpenData were created by graduate students at the University of Oxford for the March 2021 student session. These will form the core of the teaching resources for a larger scale pilot that will be organised by IRIS in academic year 2021-2022. Complementary resources have been developed independently by our partner researchers at RAL for their own Particle Physics Masterclass 2021. Elements of these RAL notebooks will be incorporated into the IRIS resources for the 2021 IRIS pilot. In addition, a set of notebooks which introduce school students to python were developed by a researcher at the University of Oxford in collaboration with Magdalen College School, a local school in Oxford. These introductory resources have also been made available to the partnership as a coding entry-point for students interested in physics and research, and will form part of the teaching package. Further online resources have been assembled by the Oxford and RAL teams which will allow students to gain understanding of Particle Physics, the Large Hadron Collider and of its experiments. These are intended to provide some of the background that the students in the pilot project got through their participation in the Particle Physics Masterclass. Summary of meeting of Aims and Objectives The objectives of the funded pilot project were to: • Survey and evaluate existing use of CERN Open Data within the target age range COMPLETED • Co-create a small number of projects with one or more local UK schools COMPLETED • Identify any barriers to wider participation ? Some identified, others being surveyed in the next stage of the pilot with IRIS and RAL • Determine the steps needed for the roll-out of a large-scale schools' programme COMPLETED and next steps already in progress The aims of the overall ATLAS OpenData co-creation project were to raise STEM aspirations; developing scientific enquiry skills; develop technical skills; and to engage underrepresented groups in STEM subjects. The feedback from the pilot project suggests that all of these aims were met in the small pilot group and can be met to a larger extent with more students in the full project. Summary The pilot project has demonstrated that there is an appetite for analysis of CERN Open Data by UK school students. We have found that with suitable resources available to them UK school students can understand the physics background, learn the necessary coding skills and perform sophisticated analysis of that data. The students also indicated enthusiasm for taking the next steps in performing independent analysis of open-ended research questions with the data. The practitioners' workshop was helpful in understanding the state-of-the-art in such projects around the world, and brought together the elements of the team that will take the next steps in the project. A partnership has been formed between IRIS, RAL and Oxford which aims to deliver a larger-scale pilot using joint resources, and then to roll out a large-scale national programme. Appendix 1 Council: BBSRC Document name: Grant Maintenance Grant reference: BB/T018534/1 Grant holder: Professor Alan Barr Department: Oxford Physics Organisation: University of Oxford Organisation reference: DLR00800 Start date: 2020-01-01T00:00:00.0000 End date: 2020-10-31T00:00:00.0000 Scheme: UKRI Public Engagement Grant status: Active Grant title: Co-creation of CERN OpenData projects with UK school students - pilot study Request type: Grant extension request Requested end date: 30 Apr 2021 Reason for grant extension: The main event planned was a school student in-person session, which was to be held in March of this year, and had to be suspended as it was planned to take place just as Covid-19 lockdown was starting. Our hope at that time was that it could be postponed a few months and instead run this September (2020), but as of the current time, schools remain uncomfortable with students attending external events. Talking with our partners in the Institute for Research in Schools, our proposal is to arrange for the event to proceed in the original format but in March 2021, by which time we hope that schools will be more relaxed about allowing students to attend university events. If that's not possible we would endeavour to deliver an online-only event.
Sector Education
Impact Types Societal,Policy & public services
 
Description Collaborative Engagement Network in Physics (CENiP).
Amount £3,640 (GBP)
Organisation University of Oxford 
Sector Academic/University
Country United Kingdom
Start 02/2022 
End 07/2022
 
Description OpenData UK Schools 
Organisation Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Department Particle Physics Department
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution My team generated the idea, leads the project, and developed most of the the materials, and is mentoring the school students.
Collaborator Contribution IRIS is delivering the project to schools, is responsible for teacher and school liaison and for school impact evaluation. RAL is hosting the computer servers, contributed to the teaching materials, is contributing to mentoring students and to evaluation.
Impact A partnership has been formed between IRIS, RAL and Oxford which aims to deliver a larger-scale pilot using joint resources, and then to roll out a large-scale national programme.
Start Year 2021
 
Description OpenData UK Schools 
Organisation The Institute For Research In Schools
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution My team generated the idea, leads the project, and developed most of the the materials, and is mentoring the school students.
Collaborator Contribution IRIS is delivering the project to schools, is responsible for teacher and school liaison and for school impact evaluation. RAL is hosting the computer servers, contributed to the teaching materials, is contributing to mentoring students and to evaluation.
Impact A partnership has been formed between IRIS, RAL and Oxford which aims to deliver a larger-scale pilot using joint resources, and then to roll out a large-scale national programme.
Start Year 2021
 
Description School mentoring sessions 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact On 16th and 18th March we arranged an event for students from UK schools to attend lectures and online tutorials at the International Particle Physics Masterclass. We followed this on 19th March with an online mentored discussion, and an online exercise in which the mentors led the school students through exercises such that they could:
• Use and modify Python programming language
• Create, fill, and interpret histograms of data from the Large Hadron Collider
• Interpret the results and propose new investigations on the data
The students, having already been introduced to the concepts of particle physics in the International Masterclass, were all already equipped with the background knowledge in particle physics required to understand the exercises. There was considerable range of experience in computing and coding amongst the students, so exercises were divided up according the bullet-points above, allowing several different starting points depending on the background of the student. This structure proved to be helpful to the students, who could proceed at their own pace within their mentored group.

The taster session was, in very large part, a success. The expected students attended, and the technology worked well. MS Teams with break-out rooms provided no significant difficulties as a teaching technology. The custom-written jupyter coding notebooks allowed a variety of entry-points for different levels of coding experience. Running the event after a Particle Physics masterclass also worked well since it provided the necessary subject knowledge to the students. Overall the students were highly engaged, reported learning a lot, and were excited and interested by the project.
The most problematic issue for the students was the timing of the sessions, which had occurred during the school day. The students proposed that future sessions happen outside school hours, so that they didn't clash with school lessons.
On the technology side, the pilot session went well with no technical problems on the day. Setting up the jupyter server, and preparing the associated ROOT software and downloads of OpenData did require considerable effort to set up from an experienced IT professional from the Oxford Physics Department. Server maintenance issues cut short the possibility for follow-up sessions when that individual became unavailable through illness, highlighting the need to integrate the operation of the server within a larger scale operation which could provide more continuity of service even when individual support staff are unavailable.
The students were surveyed soon after the event by the department's schools' liaison officer. Of the nine responders four reported that the session was "Good" and five that it was "Very good". All reported high confidence about being able to undertake a project with CERN Open Data after the session. The students reported enjoying the small-group work, the mentoring and the ability to discuss their questions with the mentors, all of whom were researchers working on the Large Hadron Collider. The students reported gaining insight into particle physics, and enjoying the feeling of doing a real research project, something new and as-yet unexplored. They all would have been keen to continue with the project for longer, had that been possible.
No potential issues related to safeguarding arose. Thought will need to be given as to how mentoring can proceed in a larger-scale project when many schools and potentially many hundreds of students are participating.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://indico.cern.ch/event/885355/timetable/#20210319