Each abstract, as well as the poster and presentation project is evaluated on its own merits. Points are awarded in various categories. Students who earn a "superior" rating are eligible for a cash award. A project needs more than just research of written materials to receive a superior. It needs to include some data collection and analysis or an environmental action. To help guide teachers and students in creating "superior" projects, please review the below evaluation rubrics that will be used when reviewing the abstracts and the final project: Suggestions: The goal of the Spokane Youth Environmental Conference is to encourage students to do real scientific investigations. The ideal poster or presentation includes: - a question to be answered or a proposal (a hypothesis),
- background information on the question,
- method for answering the question (method of experimentation),
- results of the experiment, and
- conclusion (answer the question).
A simple example is growing plants in differing amounts of fertilizer and observing different growth rates. The student would observe and record their own data and formulate conclusions from the data. Alternatively, students could utilize existing data. In this case, the method of addressing the hypothesis would include citing the data source and the results would be a tabulation of the existing data. The student would then draw conclusions for the summarized existing data. The conference organizers want to include the best presentations and posters in the conference. The "Call for Participation" Form (abstract) is used to evaluate projects for inclusion in the conference. Thus, it is important for the final product to reflect the project summary submitted. Ideally, the project summary would be written after the project is completed. Teachers: A good way to ensure that the project summaries reflect the actual product and that the best projects get to the conference would be for the teacher to assign an environmental project to be done individually or in groups of two or three. The teacher can then select the best projects (i.e. those which receive an A or a B+) for participation in the conference. Students who submit a project, but are not selected to participate will be given first priority to attend the conference as observers. << Back to "How to Participate" |
