Learning from Design a Car Unit

RA Yasmeen's reflections on the year:
Over the past three quarters working on our team’s research project, what I have enjoyed the most is having been a part of some of the main steps of the research process from the Design a Car for a Loved One unit. From attending professional development meetings discussing alternative assessments, to coding and analyzing themes in student work based on those same assessments, I am so glad to have been able to participate in such a project. For example, the earliest Professional Development meeting I attended was where teachers from the physics department came together under the guidance of Dr. Kang and discussed initial student work regarding the new unit in order to apply and understand physics concepts taught in class. I remember reading excerpts of student initial work then and compared that to the students' final assessments, which reflected not only physics content, but their own personal tastes and affection for family members, as they designed features to keep their loved ones safe while also attending to their personal tastes and preferences.

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That having been my initial exposure to the project, I have been able to interact with the following outcomes of the project, such as attending one teacher’s introduction of the unit to her students, decoding student work, reading letters students wrote to their loved ones, and finally coding student letters to analyze major themes in student work. 
Having the ability to work for an extended period of time on such a project has been highly rewarding as we have been able to see growth in student thinking, and have been able to interact with different pieces of data, such as teacher interviews, classroom observations, and analysis of student work. I look forward to resuming our team’s  research in the fall!