{"id":4581,"date":"2018-09-20T16:22:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T21:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/for-wisconsin\/?post_type=campus_story&p=4581"},"modified":"2018-09-20T16:22:11","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T21:22:11","slug":"uw-fond-du-lac-living-laboratory-partnership-with-local-childrens-museum-provides-unique-opportunities-for-students","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-fond-du-lac-living-laboratory-partnership-with-local-childrens-museum-provides-unique-opportunities-for-students\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-Fond du Lac Living Laboratory partnership with local children’s museum provides unique opportunities for students"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

Eyes sparkle and small hands clap in delight after moving the ball across a board to successfully make a series of lights turn on. There is pride in comprehension and completion for this young child as she learns through play at the\u00a0Children\u2019s Museum of Fond du Lac<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her learning is both personal and broadly significant: The game she is playing was created by University of Wisconsin-Fond du Lac sophomore Grace Hudson, who is researching young children\u2019s use of prepositions\u2014the words that express relationship and position. The research is part of a special campus-museum collaboration giving undergraduate psychology students research opportunities\u00a0in a program with national status and funding from the National Science Foundation. Opportunities like this are usually reserved for students in upper level programs. UW-Fond du Lac Assistant Professor of Psychology\u00a0Kayoung Kim, Ph.D.,<\/a>\u00a0is the link connecting dozens of\u00a0students each year to the\u00a0Living Laboratory<\/a>\u00a0initiative site at the Children\u2019s Museum of Fond du Lac.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Clara Wojkiewicz (left) participates in an activity at the Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac while UW-Fond du Lac students Grace Hudson (center) and Becky Vis (right) monitor her progress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Living Laboratory aims to educate the public about child development by immersing museum visitors in the process of scientific discovery. It was developed at the Museum of Science in Boston in 2005, where Kim worked on the project earlier in her career.\u00a0The Living Laboratory’s\u00a0educational model has scientists recruit participants and conduct their studies within interactive exhibits at local museums.<\/p>\n

Families visiting the museum are invited to participate in ongoing research projects and to engage in one-on-one conversations with scientists. The Children\u2019s Museum of Fond du Lac became an\u00a0affiliated Living Laboratory<\/a>\u00a0site in 2014.\u00a0 When UW-Fond du Lac’s\u00a0Regional Executive Officer and Dean\u00a0Martin Rudd learned of Kim\u2019s history with the program, he introduced her to museum executive director Andrea Welsch.<\/p>\n

\u201cKayoung is a true gem and she effortlessly and passionately lights a spark for learning within the college students and young museum visitors,\u201d Welsch said. \u201cIt is an honor to work with her on staff in our UW system, right here in Fond du Lac. Without her past experiences in university research, this partnership would not be as impactful as it has been.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rare Student Research<\/h2>\n

Kim\u2019s encouragement regularly brings more than 30 of her first- and second-year students into the museum for research activities. Students apply for the positions, interview\u00a0and complete training before participating.*<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though research experience is a highly sought-out, desired experience, the opportunities are very limited and very scarce especially for students in their freshmen and sophomore years,\u201d Kim said. \u201cBy providing this research opportunity from the first years of their academic training, students are able to learn about research firsthand, to practice psychological science outside of the classroom, and to acquire research experience that will serve as a pathway to their future academic attempts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two recent sophomores have each designed and continue to conduct their own research projects, with such success that they had the highly unusual experience of presenting their findings with Kim at an Association for Psychological Science (APS) conference in San Francisco, May 23-27, 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have not seen a lot of sophomore students who are first authors on their project; most of these student researchers are presenting as part of their advisors\u2019 research team, not as the main investigator,\u201d Kim said. \u201cBeing invited for presentation at such a big conference at such an early time in their academic training is a very important achievement to be celebrated. They also got to attend workshops, seminars, and presentations from world-leading researchers in psychology, which is beyond any academic preparations they could get solely from their undergraduate education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Student-designed Projects<\/h2>\n
\"Photo<\/a>
A few examples of the cards used as part of the study researching children’s use of prepositions.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hudson, of North Fond du Lac, began her research on preposition use in fall 2016. Sam Ritger, of Fond du Lac, served as a research assistant for Hudson, then developed his own project on haptic cognition\u2014the active exploration of objects\u2014in fall 2017. After completing their studies\u00a0at UW-Fond du Lac, both Hudson and Ritger\u00a0are now transferring to UW Oshkosh to complete their bachelor’s degree. UW-Fond du Lac is a campus of UW Oshkosh.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the most important things I\u2019ve learned so far about conducting research, especially with children, is that it doesn’t\u00a0always go how you pictured it,\u201d said Hudson. Her interactive project has children move a small metal ball along a path according to six directions represented by prepositions (such as \u201cmove the ball on the green block\u201d); correct placement of the ball illuminates a light on the board.\u00a0\u201cI knew that\u2026it would be best to keep the study itself short, informative for the parents, and fun for the children.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research is ongoing. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing reading about the development of children, but in working with them I\u2019ve been given the chance to see them learn,\u201d said Hudson, who credits Kim for her decision to pursue a career in psychology.\u00a0\u201cSome children have come back and wanted to play with the materials again and it was fun to see them not only enjoying the research materials, but enjoying that it seemed to help them learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritger values the ways his research project deepen his own learning. His project requires young children to first identify shapes visually, then by touch without sight, and finally by matching a two-dimensional picture to an object inside a box.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis project has helped me to better understand my current major\u2014psychology\u2014by gaining further knowledge on the process in which research transpires,\u201d said Ritger. \u201cI had to quickly make adjustments to certain aspects to get the best possible result of my study. Overall, this process has been very eye-opening for me. My undergraduate research will help me immensely as I transition into a four-year university and take more advanced level psychology classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local Connections<\/h2>\n

\u201cI was very fortunate to have come across such bright, brilliant, and passionate minds on my campus,\u201d Kim said. \u201cThis was very early in their training, and they needed to acquire a lot of the skills necessary to successfully engage in such complex research designs. Both of them developed their research projects during the semester when they were taking a statistics course with me. Statistical knowledge is not only the key to understanding the collected data, but as students in my statistics course learn and practice research design, both of them were able to acquire an enhanced understanding of fundamental experimental research designs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim cites the importance of the collaboration between UW-Fond du Lac and the Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac for her students\u2019 learning and success.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are immensely grateful to have an ongoing collaboration with the museum,\u201d she said. \u201cI greatly look forward to developing more student-led research projects to be run at the museum, and my student researchers and I will continue to present our findings to the discipline in the form of presentations and publications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Story\u00a0by Monica M. Walk<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Photos by Laurie Krasin<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

*NOTE:<\/strong>\u00a0Researchers in the Living Laboratory (LL) become part of the exhibit in the museum, where all are welcome to interact and experience what is offered. The research process is thoroughly explained to parents who provide written consent to use their children\u2019s performance as data. Any child that wishes to withdraw, or any parent that does not consent to the experiment, is still welcome to play with research props, but their performance is not recorded. Care is taken to respect the museum\u2019s regulations and policies in interacting with parents\/children, and all student staff, including Dr. Kim, receive museum training each semester.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Contact<\/h3>\n
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Laurie Krasin<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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920-929-1108<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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laurie.krasin@uwc.edu<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eyes sparkle and small hands clap in delight after moving the ball across a board to successfully make a series of lights turn on. There is pride in comprehension and completion for this young child as she learns through play at the\u00a0Children\u2019s Museum of Fond du Lac. Her learning is both personal and broadly significant: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":4585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[109,94],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-4581","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-colleges","institution-uw-oshkosh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/4581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=4581"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=4581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}