Daily guide for projects#
Summary#
The project component of Climatematch Academy is designed to guide you through the entire research process, providing a comprehensive journey from project ideation to outcome presentation, all within a condensed time frame of just two weeks. Within a dedicated three-hour time slot each day, you will collaborate with a group of 4-6 fellow students from your pod to collectively develop a single research project.
On Day 1, you will learn about good research practices by working on a ‘mock’ project through the lens of equity. You will then spend eight days applying those skills to a scientific question and a geographical region that interests you and your teammates. To familiarize yourselves with the datasets at hand, you will examine the spatial and temporal distribution of one climate variable on global and local scales. After performing a brief literature review, you will develop a sense of interesting open questions in the field and will devise a specific testable hypothesis accordingly. On Day 4, your group will submit a project proposal that you will swap with other groups to practice giving and receiving feedback through a peer review process. For the rest of the course, you will focus on acquiring evidence for or against your hypothesis. Throughout this time, you will be supported by your pod’s Teaching Assistant and a dedicated Project Teaching Assistant. Finally, in the last two sessions of the course, you will prepare a short presentation showcasing the story of your project and meet with other groups in your megapod to discuss your findings with them.
Project materials#
You have been assigned a project based on the preferences listed in your application. Each project comes with an introductory video, a project template and a data loading jupyter notebook.
Student groups will define their own research question. Project templates are maps of research ideas developed by the Climatematch Academy team. They are composed of GREEN, YELLOW, and RED questions in accordance with their difficulty. Each difficulty level is further divided into questions relating to a physical climate phenomenon (borderless) and those relating to socio-economic issues (dashed border). Student groups should use this template as a guide and ideally come up with their own research question.
The templates should be used in several ways:
All teams must work through the GREEN questions on Day 2. This will let you familiarize yourselves with the relevant datasets and appreciate the global variability of your selected climate phenomenon before defining your research question.
All teams must work on a research question related to a physical climate phenomenon, such as those proposed in the yellow and red boxes.
All teams are encouraged to consider the socio-economic impact of their climate phenomenon of interest (dashed border). We advise you to support your conclusions with data if it is possible.
If you are new to climate science or do not have a lot of research experience, we strongly recommend that you use the research questions provided in the template extensively. The templates have been designed to give you enough structure to get started and enough options to keep going if you stick with the template. Comprehensively answering just one YELLOW or RED question from the template would be an achievement! You can pick the question that interests you the most right away without following the flow suggested by arrows on the template.
If you are an experienced climate researcher, you are more than welcome to branch out beyond the template and define your own research questions! However, we do ask you to stick to the climate datasets provided to you.
Project Teaching Assistants#
Project Teaching Assistants are your friendly project experts to consult with on all issues related to your project topics and datasets. They can help with brainstorming project ideas, literature searches, and coding. You will meet with them on a regular basis.
They will visit your group on Day 1 to make introductions and will subsequently meet with you, on average, for 45-60 minutes every day or 1.5-2 hours every other day. As projects progress, Project Teaching Assistants might need to prioritize junior groups, but they can also be summoned to senior groups for meetings when needed. Since they can arrive unannounced at any time (busy schedules!), please stop what you were doing to have the meeting, and then resume your work when the Project Teaching Assistant leaves. Please also post questions on discord in the #project-specific channels. All project Teaching Assistants have time set aside specifically to answer discord questions and to provide additional meetings when necessary.
Project Time#
You will have 2.5-3 hours each day to work on projects. The goal during the first week is to learn about the research process and develop a project idea. To simplify logistics, we have already broken you into project groups. Among other reasons, you were (climate)matched with your pod and research group, because you share an interest in similar climate phenomena. We understand that specific interests and motivations will vary even within project groups and becoming part of the Climatematch community is as much about finding your role in the team as it is about pursuing a specific personal research interest. During the second week, which includes the Project Day (W2D5), you will implement the analyses, interpret your findings, and present them to your megapod peers on the last day of Climatematch Academy.
Embedded in the project time will also be a set of professional development activities: two hour-long meetings with mentors as well as one-hour Impact Talk activity of your choice from the following list: 1) climate justice, 2) equity in climate science, 3) open climate science, and 4) climate science communication..
POD INTRODUCTIONS W1D1#
Monday, 15th July (PM) for everyone
On W1D1, you will meet your pod 30 minutes before the regular start of the tutorial time for introductory activities. Your pod’s Teaching Assistant will also tell you the project group you have been assigned to and its project topic. In some pods, the two groups will work on the same topic while others might be assigned two different topics depending on student interests. If you wish to work in the other group, discuss it with your Teaching Assistant.
During the pod introduction on W1D1, your Teaching Assistant will also inform you about your project group’s schedule for watching and discussing the Impact Talks in the second week (W2D1). One group will do this activity during the first hour of the project block, while the other will dedicate the last hour of the project block to it. The discussions following the Impact Talk will be facilitated by you - the students. Your Teaching Assistant will help you appoint yourselves to the leading roles during the pod introductions. You can read more about this activity here.
SESSION 1#
Monday, 15th July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Tuesday, 16th July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
The goal of the day is to learn about the process of research design. To this end you will work through the tutorials on good research practices in your project groups. Your Project Teaching Assistant will come by at some point during this period to introduce themselves and facilitate your progression through the tutorial for 30-45 minutes.
SESSION 2#
Tuesday, 16th July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Wednesday, 19th July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
The goal of the day is to get familiar with the dataset that you will work on your project. Each project team will choose one of the predefined templates according to their research interests. This project session is structured as follows:
Time zones 2 & 5: (1h) Professional Development - Mentor meeting I: During the first hour, your project group will be visited by mentors. In these meetings, they will share their professional path in a climate-related field, offer personalized career advice, and provide a networking opportunity. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the suggested meeting structure and tips for getting the most out of these meetings here.
Everyone: (2h) Explore one of the provided climate datasets from your chosen project template by working through the GREEN questions. Use the data loading notebook to get started and try to understand what is being done and why. Parts of this code might be reusable or adaptable later. Be on the lookout for interesting hypotheses and remember to work as a team! Ask for help, assist others, and discuss your findings throughout the day.
Apply the data wrangling skills you have acquired in tutorials thus far to generate the global maps suggested in Q1. Examine your plots. Do you notice any interesting patterns across the globe or over time?
Plot the global mean of the variable(s) over the time period suggested in Q2. Do you observe any trends? Does the result align with your expectations? Why? Why not?
As a group, agree on a geographical region to focus on and answer Q3. Depending on the variable you explore, choosing a continent, subcontinent, or small region might be appropriate choices. How does the result compare with your answer to Q2? Does this result align with your expectations? Why? Why not?
Time zones 1, 3 & 4: Use the remaining hour to brainstorm and start reviewing literature.
(15 min) Start by discussing your initial project ideas! As a group, try to come up with one or a few questions of interest, either by yourselves or directly from the project template. Was there anything weird or intriguing you noticed in the data yesterday? Are there any questions in the template you find particularly exciting?
(30 min) Start doing literature review using search engines like Google or Baidu. Look only at abstracts to select 2-3 promising ones. Revisit Step 2 of the tutorial on good research practices to review the literature more efficiently!
(15 min) Report to the whole group what papers you found and pool them together. Assign one paper per person to read/skim.
SESSION 3#
Wednesday, 17th July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Thursday, 18th July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
The goal of the day is to complete the literature review and formulate the research questions. The literature review aims to find out what is known or has been hypothesized about your climate phenomenon, determine what aspects are currently the most debated, and to help you define some keywords that you will use in your project proposal tomorrow. You do not need to come up with a completely original question! Do, however, situate your research within the relevant literature, and try to get hints/suggestions from other papers.
Time zones 1, 3 & 4: (1h) Professional Development - Mentor meeting I: During the first hour, your project group will be visited by mentors. In these meetings, they will share their professional path in a climate-related field, offer personalized career advice, and provide a networking opportunity. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the suggested meeting structure and tips for getting the most out of these meetings here.
Time zones 2 & 5: Use the first hour to brainstorm and start reviewing literature.
(15 min) Start by discussing your initial project ideas! As a group, try to come up with one or a few questions of interest, either by yourselves or directly from the project template. Was there anything weird or intriguing you noticed in the data yesterday? Are there any questions in the template you find particularly exciting?
(30 min) Start doing literature review using search engines like Google or Baidu. Look only at abstracts to select 2-3 promising ones. Revisit Step 2 of the tutorial on good research practices to review the literature more efficiently!
(15 min) Report to the whole group what papers you found and pool them together. Assign one paper per person to read/skim.
Everyone: The remaining 2 hours will be used to conclude the literature review and define the research questions:
(1h) On your own, read the paper that was assigned to you. Make notes in a common google doc shared with your group, and especially write down important keywords or concepts which you might use in your project proposal. If you are interested in a closed-access paper and are not connected to an .edu domain or a VPN, try to find full versions of papers on preprint servers like arXiv or bioRxiv. You could also ask your Teaching Assistants to get it for you (and they might in turn ask someone who has access to a university VPN). There might be other options too…
(30 min) Report back to the group. In ~5 minutes, try to tell them as much as you understand about the paper. Get into details, but do not just read whole sections from the paper out loud. Ask the other students questions about the papers they are presenting to understand them better.
(30 min) Discuss and synthesize information from the papers presented. Identify overlapping themes, concepts, or gaps in the research you have encountered. Based on these discussions, refine the initial questions the group came up with. Aim to narrow down to a primary research question that is specific, measurable, and relevant to the data and interests of the group.
(30 min) Formulate the research question and devise a hypothesis. Discuss as a group what they expect to discover or what predictions they can make based on their literature review and understanding of the data. This hypothesis should guide your project’s direction and the methods you will need to employ. We encourage you to consider not only the physical science aspects of a climate phenomenon, but also its socio-economic impact. We understand that specific interests and motivations will vary even within project groups and becoming part of the Climatematch community is as much about finding your role in the team as it is about pursuing a specific personal research interest. Please consider your teammates interests and ideas with as much respect as your own.
SESSION 4#
Thursday, 18th July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Friday, 19st July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
The goal of the day is to submit your project proposal via Airtable link.
Everyone
(30 min) By yourself, read the Ten simple rules for structuring papers. Pay close attention to figure 1, and how it specifies the same overall structure for the abstract, for each paragraph in the paper, and for the paper as a whole.
(1.5 h) As a group, try to write a proposal for this project based on the way you understand it now, following the C-C-C scheme described in the Ten simple rules paper.
Context: scientific background and the knowledge gap your project will aim to fill. Include keywords and concepts that you identified in your literature review.
Content: your hypothesis and a description of the analyses and the results (positive or negative) you would need to answer your question.
Conclusion: the potential significance and societal impact of the work. The proposal can be a list of bullet points or a coherent paragraph; do not worry about the structure too much. The goal is to structure your thoughts and ideas so that a person unfamiliar with the topic can understand the importance of your research question and approach.
(30 min) It is always revealing to present your research to someone who has never heard about it. Share your proposal with the other team in your pod and receive their proposal in return. In your group, read and discuss the other team’s abstract and write down some feedback. What do you understand about their project? What do you not understand about it? When giving your feedback, keep in mind that the other research group has put a lot of effort into generating the proposal and may not have had time to polish the language or presentation of their ideas. We always aim to be direct and specific, but also polite, respectful, and kind in our communication with each other.
(30 min) Work to address the feedback received from the other team. When done, submit the project proposal here. Your proposal will not be graded, but its submission is required to receive a project badge on your Climatematch Academy certificate.
SESSION 5#
Friday, 19st July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Monday, 22th July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
The goal of the day is to draft the analysis framework and allocate tasks. You should now have a sense of the data, and you have probably refined your hypothesis a little. Writing a proposal will have helped you get a rough idea of what tools you might use to tackle your research question, and what the answer could look like. You will use the remaining project time to implement the analyses you have planned and make progress towards an answer. To this end, you should organize your time and plan accordingly. Keep in mind that your group might not be able to complete their research plan, but don’t get discouraged: answering a research question usually takes months if not years of work and you should consider making meaningful progress towards that goal a great success!
Time zones 1, 3 & 4:
(1h) Professional Development - Impact Talk: As agreed during introductions on W1D1, one project group in the pod should do this during the first hour of the project block, while the other should leave this for the last hour of the block. The talks cover topics such as 1) climate justice, 2) equity in climate science, 3) open climate science, and 4) communication in climate science. Each pod will select one topic to begin with, which will be followed by facilitated group discussions. Should there be additional time, students may opt to explore another topic.
Everyone:
(40 min) Draft the analysis plan. Discuss the main methods and techniques to be used for analyzing the data. Consider different analytical approaches that could be applied and select the most appropriate ones for their specific data and questions. TAs are here to help you, if you know what analysis you need, but don’t know how to do it. They can point you to useful toolkits that may be difficult to find otherwise.
(20 min) Divide the group into smaller teams or have them work individually based on their skills or areas of interest. Assign specific parts of the data analysis to each student or team, ensuring that everyone has a clear task that contributes to the overall project. Finally, create a timeline that includes specific dates for progress checks and integration points. Set specific goals for the remaining session.
(1h) Start working on your project! A few pieces of general advice:
Leverage existing tools: Try not to implement complicated analyses from scratch. Use existing toolkits, and learn how to use them well. This kind of knowledge is very helpful long-term.
Focus on clear objectives: Keep your project goals clear and your activities aligned with achieving these goals. This helps in maintaining a direct path towards successful project outcomes.
Maintain simplicity: Start with simple analyses and build complexity as needed. This approach helps in early detection of potential data issues and allows for easier troubleshooting.
Time zones 2 & 5:
(1h) Continuing working on your project.
SESSION 6#
Monday, 23th July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Tuesday, 24th July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
You set the goal of the day!
Time zones 2 & 5:
(1h) Professional Development - Impact Talk: As agreed during introductions on W1D1, one project group in the pod should do this during the first hour of the project block, while the other should leave this for the last hour of the block. The talks cover topics such as 1) climate justice, 2) equity in climate science, 3) open climate science, and 4) communication in climate science. Each pod will select one topic to begin with, which will be followed by facilitated group discussions. Should there be additional time, students may opt to explore another topic.
Everyone: Continue working on your project!
If you find a negative answer to your question, that is absolutely ok! Please do report that. Then go back and think about how this affects your initial hypothesis. Does it rule it out, or could there be limitations in this particular data that lead to the negative result? What other data could you seek out that would be more well-suited for answering this question? Try to design a new experiment in specific details and tell us about it. Who knows, somebody might run that experiment someday!
If you find a positive result (i.e. the data matches your hypothesis), you should spend the rest of your time validating it to make absolutely sure it is a real effect. For example, if you created a proxy-based paleoclimate reconstruction of precipitation hydrogen isotopes (δD) to assess past changes in rainfall amount, there are a few factors you could consider to ensure that the climate signal in your data is real and reliable. Are the δD values in the part of your record closest to present similar to modern measurements of rainfall δD at your study site? Are there other factors in addition to your variable of interest (rainfall amount) that may be contributing to the δD signal in your data? Can you remove the effect of these other factors so that the dominant signal in your δD record is recording changes in rainfall amount?
SESSION 7#
Tuesday, 23th July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Wednesday, 24th July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
What is your goal for the day?
Time zones 1, 3 & 4:
(1h) Professional Development - Mentor meeting II: During the first hour, your project group will be visited by mentors. In these meetings, they will share their professional path in a climate-related field, offer personalized career advice, and provide a networking opportunity. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the suggested meeting structure and tips for getting the most out of these meetings here.
Everyone: Continue working on your project! A couple of extra pieces of general advice:
Collaborate effectively: Make sure to reconvene with your teammates every 1-1.5 hours to discuss your progress. If you are struggling with something, ask others for help right away! Use your Project Teaching Assistant and your pod’s Teaching Assistant as a resource when your group gets stuck.
Document everything: Keep detailed records of your data analysis processes, decisions, and modifications. This practice is invaluable for revisiting your work and providing clear explanations during your project presentation.
Think about the impact: On Day 7, the curriculum of the course will start shifting from topics surrounding physical climate phenomena to issues of socio-economic impact as well as mitigation and adaptation strategies. This is a good point to start thinking about the impact the research topic you are studying as part of your project has on ecosystems and communities.
SESSION 8#
Wednesday, 24th July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Thursday, 25th July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
What is your goal for the day?
Time zones 2 & 5:
(1h) Professional Development - Mentor meeting II: During the first hour, your project group will be visited by mentors. In these meetings, they will share their professional path in a climate-related field, offer personalized career advice, and provide a networking opportunity. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the suggested meeting structure and tips for getting the most out of these meetings here.
Everyone: Continue working on your project and start thinking about what are your main findings. It is okay to feel short of time but do not feel discouraged. Below, some final advice for the last part of your project implementation:
Prioritize key tasks: Focus on the essential elements of your project that directly contribute to answering your research questions.
Prepare for contingencies: If something isn’t working as planned due to time constraints, focus on alternatives that can achieve similar outcomes within the available time.
The project submission form you will complete tomorrow also includes a question about your interest in potentially continuing your project after the course as a Climatematch Impact Scholar. Please take a moment to read about this opportunity and discuss it with your teammates and Teaching Assistants.
SESSION 9#
Thursday, 25th July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Friday, 26th July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
The goal of the day is to interpret your results and identify conclusions.
Use this session to wrap up your main findings:
You can list these in bullet points and emphasize how they address the research questions or contribute to understanding the underlying problem. In case of any unexpected results, discuss with your pod and theorize why they might have occurred. All results are valid!
Link your results to literature. Compare your findings with your reviewed literature. How do your results support, contradict or expand the current knowledge?
Based on the findings and their implications, draft your conclusions.
W2D5: Project day and final presentations#
Friday, 26th July (AM) for groups in timezone slots 2 and 5 Friday, 26th July (PM) for groups in timezone slots 1, 3, and 4
The goal of the day is to communicate your results in the final presentation. Tie up loose ends and prepare a short slideshow about your project! Your pod’s Teaching Assistant will be around during the tutorial time block and your Project Teaching Assistant will be available during the project time block as usual “Project day” will be dedicated to preparing your presentation and rehearsing. In this block you will have 4 hours:
(1h) Finalize visuals: Complete any graphs, charts, or visual aids that will be used in your presentation.
(2h) Use this presentation template. Make a copy for your team to edit! You can add your group name and project title to the bottom panel of non-title slides through Slide -> Edit theme. Consider these suggestions:
Content : The 1 minute - 1 slide rule might seem like an impossible limit. However, it is one of the most useful formats you can learn, often referred to as a “one minute elevator pitch”.
Always have an introduction slide and a conclusion slide. If your group is relatively large (>=5 people), then someone should be assigned to each of the intro and conclusion slides. If your group is small, then the same person can present the intro + next slide, or conclusion slide + previous slide.
It’s completely normal if your group doesn’t achieve expected results. If this is true for your group, the main goal will be to explain the logic behind your project proposal. For instance, if you designed a project to compare climate datasets to analyze the impact of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on global temperatures, but couldn’t find the appropriate data to get answers, this is still valuable. In the case of this example, the takeaways from your project could potentially highlight the need for more temperature data from specific regions or time periods in order to assess ENSO variability. What got you excited about this particular project? What could your project evolve into if given more time and resources? Once your slides are finished, you should submit the file via this Airtable link.
(1h) The key to a good presentation is to practice it by yourself many times. It is no different from other performing arts (acting, playing a musical instrument etc), where rehearsals are crucial to a good performance.
Final Presentations#
This is the time you present your project to other groups in your megapod. You can invite your Project Teaching Assistant too, but they might not make it if they are busy. Groups will take turns to share their screens. Keep in mind that your presentation is meant to be told as a story, and everyone from your group should take their turn in telling a part of that story. Tell us about the different hypotheses you have had at different points and how you refined them using some of the tools you learned during the course.
Schedule#
10 minutes of meet & greet. Do a round of introductions (one Teaching Assistant calls out names from the zoom list). Everyone says their name, pod name, position, institution or other area of work, and subject of study, as well as one interesting fact about themselves. “Hi, I’m Jonny from the wiggly caterpillars and I am a PhD student at University of Notre Dame in Paris. I study the relationship between moisture and storms, and in my free time I like to go on long bike rides’’.
30-40 minutes of presentations, including questions. Each group should speak for approximately 5 minutes (depending on group size), and then take questions for 1-2 minutes. The Lead Teaching Assistant of your megapod will determine the order of presentations.
10-20 minutes of general discussion. Use the following questions to guide the group discussion. Spend a few minutes on each question. It’s ok not to use all these questions, especially if you have your own questions to ask!
What was missing in the dataset that you would have really liked to have?
Does anyone plan to continue working on this project in the future? Climatematch Academy will be able to support selected groups with the computing resources required to take projects to the next level. Read more about the opportunity to become a Climatematch Impact Scholar here.
Which one of the 8 steps of good research practices was hardest and why?
Based on your experience with the project, what project would you most like to do next? Make up your own, or pick from the other projects available in the course.
What surprised you the most about the process of working on a project? In what way was this project most different from other projects you have worked on in the past?
What technique did you learn in the course that you think you can immediately apply to your own project (if you are currently doing research)?
Logistics#
Presentations will take place right after the block of the preparation on W2D5 (AM for Time Zones 2 & 5, PM for Time zones 1, 3 & 4).
You will present to other groups (3-5 groups per room). An email will be sent with the zoom room of one of the pods and all groups will meet there for one hour. There is a hard cutoff at the one hour mark, and it will be the Teaching Assistants’ responsibility to ensure everyone gets a turn to present.
One minute per person and one slide per person only! This is primarily to ensure that everyone in your megapod gets to present before the hard cutoff at the one hour mark.
Do not introduce yourselves again, just present the material directly.
When you are done presenting, leave the last slide up (with conclusions), and open the floor for questions.
Questions#
If your presentation was short enough, there is time for questions from the audience. These are a great way to get feedback on your project!
Before you ask a question, consider whether others might be interested in that topic too. This usually means asking big picture questions, as opposed to detailed, technical questions, but there are exceptions.
If you are answering the question, try to be short and concise. Your audience will notice if you start rambling, and it can seem as if you are avoiding the question. Answering concisely is another very useful skill in “real life”. It also means that you can take more questions given our time constraints.