HIGH SCHOOL EXCELLENCE PROJECTS: A WAY TO INTRODUCE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

After high school graduation students need to face the dilemma of the way they will follow at the university. It is fairly common that high school students do not know how research does work in practice. A preliminary initiation to research would help them making an informed decision, especially when the student preferences are focused on scientific-technical careers. High School Excellence Projects propose short research activities that aim to introduce the students to the research activity performed at university laboratories. The project is focused in two main aspects of the student formation. First, get them in contact with the laboratory environment and the scientific method. This provides the student with an opportunity to learn first-hand the methodology of a research laboratory, and systematize the procedures that the scientific method offers. They will use scientific equipment to perform simple experiments and then extract the corresponding conclusions. Second, to introduce them to different ways to handle, present and interpret scientific data. For this, they will elaborate a short summary of the scientific work carried out during the project. They will become familiar with scientific language and learn to properly present the results and conclusions of their work. Parallel to the written summary, they will perform a short oral presentation exposing to other students their work and results.
In this communication we expose the objectives that are expected from a High School Excellence project and show the example of our own proposed project for high school students: “Forensic discrimination through Raman Spectroscopy of legal tender banknotes and their falsifications”.