SIMply Prairie - Planning & Conducting Your Investigation

Defining the Problem

Good research teams begin work by discussing the main research question, developing a list of other questions they need to answer in order to address the overall question. Teams develop at least one specific research question to answer based on an analysis of their data. They discover what they know and what they need to know. Teams update this document during their work because as they learn more, they answer some questions and ask others. There are different ways to record know/need to know information. Need ideas? Check out these samples of student.

• tips for focusing your research question
• a Know/Need to Know Table
• a Mind Map or Concept Map

Research teams keep logs or journals where they describe their work, noting questions and how they go about answering them. These journals are bound books with page numbers to make it easy to find information. Scientists record not only what worked but what did not.

Page from the log book of a researcher who studied bumblebees at Fermilab.

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Collaborating with Other Students

Fall and summer are probably the best times to study prairie grasses and forbs. Therefore, there will be a number of student research studies underway at the same time. Good researchers are interested in knowing the results of other studies in their field. You may want to communicate with other active research groups to see how their data compares with yours. Your research will be richer if you collaborate with students from other schools who are doing similar research. In a collaboration you work together to design and conduct your research. For example, you may report your data separately but publish a joint research report.

Get a List of Student Research Groups.

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Telecommunicating with Experts

Good research teams learn from other researchers.

Find the contacts for the prairies in the SIMply Prairie Program.

Look at our list of other prairie experts.

• Grand Prairie Friends

To submit an online resource send e-mail to prairie-data@fnal.gov

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Creating and Implementing a Work Plan

Good research teams set up a work plan outlining key steps in their work and the team member who will have primary responsibility for helping the team complete that step accurately and on time. Sample Student Work Plans

Online resources can help you implement your plan.

• Prairie Data has:
  • Background information including keys to identify prairie plants.
  • Worksheets to practice a quadrat study.
  • Pages to gather, enter and graph your data.

• Visualization Tools allow you to represent your data graphically.

• SIMply Prairie can help you analyze data to answer your research question. You can compare your data with the data contributed by other student research teams to find out, for example, if the plant population varies between a native and a reconstructed prairie or if the plant population changes as the reconstructed prairie ages. Look for the prairies that have characteristics you want to study in data for:
  • Current Studies
  • Studies from Previous Years (starting in 1992)

  Contact student groups collecting data for those prairies whose characteristics you are researching by searching for studies of prairies. For each study, you can get a list of their teacher's name and e-mail address and an expert for the prairie.

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Sharing Your Research

• What were your research questions?
• What data did you collect? What other data did you use?
• What other resources did you use?
• What did you find out?
• What other questions do you have?

Scientists must publish their work to report what they have learned and to have their results confirmed by other scientists. Share the results of your research by e-mail. Send us:

• The title of your research study with a short abstract (25 words or less).
• A contact e-mail address for your teacher or leader.
• The URL if the study is served from your computer.
• Or a request to publish your work on the SIMply Prairie Project Website.

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Your teacher may have specific plans for forming research teams. Make sure you understand how you will:

Begin your research, sharing ideas with your classmates.
Record your progress.
Publish your results.