Week 2: Progress, Refinement, and Chaos

Hello everyone! This week, I focused on refining the documents and materials (i.e., iPads and consent forms) needed before starting my experiment phase. I started by reviewing my project’s consent forms to ensure they are clear and thorough. While reviewing the consent forms, I noticed that there were some potential risks that could unintentionally harm the participants. Because of this, I contacted my on-site advisor, Basel Hussein, to discuss how I could present the risk in a clear way to ensure the participants’ safety. We also discussed how I should include a “Exclusion Criteria” to ensure that only participants without certain medical conditions would take part in the study. For an extra precaution, I also had my faculty advisor and high school directors look over my consent forms to ensure everything was fine and addressed. 

To minimize and address these potential risks further, I went back and revised the strict set of rules that students must follow in order to take part in my experiment. A major part of this week was developing a clear and structured set of rules for participants, which originally only consisted of one rule: participants must remain on the rhythm game during sessions. This was supposed to help maintain consistency across all participants and improve the accuracy of my results. However, in light of the new potential risks, I made sure that participants had clear guidelines to follow to properly address these risks. For example, I require proper breaks and provide clear instructions that the student must follow before playing a song. 

I also created the chart that I will use to track students’ finger and hand coordination and motivation throughout the experiment. This chart will allow me to organize my data effectively and observe any patterns or improvements over time.

Finally, I went to school to begin recruiting potential participants for my experiment. This was an important step because it allows me to know how many iPads I would need as I follow up with my high school directors. While recruiting, I also asked the participants the days and times they would be free, so I could know when to hold the gameplay and keyboard instruction sessions for my senior project.

For next week, I plan on finalizing all the documents and materials needed for my experiment phase, so that I can begin holding my first gameplay sessions!