Metabolizing science from the laboratory to the classroom: The Metabolt Educational Experience

The present article summarizes a pilot knowledge co-creation process experience done with a group of 15 eleven and twelve years old students of Porsöskolan, a public school near Luleå Tekniska Universitet from September 2018 to January 2019. The experience is based on a true research project of the Group of Atmospheric Science (GAS) called METABOLT, an instrument to investigate the metabolic activity of microorganisms in soils by measuring the electrochemical and gaseous bio signatures. In this paper, we explain how we have designed, developed, applied and evaluated a complete learning and engagement strategy to bring science from the laboratory to the classroom. The experience adapts the scientific method to the primary classroom level, taking as practical case the METABOLT experiment: identification of a problem, hypothesis design, experiment creation to get results, analysis and confrontation with the hypothesis and provisional conclusions to verify or discard them. After the experience a set of surveys were given to all the stakeholders, students, teachers and researchers to evaluate their perception of the effects of the activity. One unexpected result is the difference in perception between the teachers and students on the learning experience. This project demonstrates that professional researchers with the adequate communication strategy, training and tracking can promote a relevant learning process and achieve a social impact in different audiences