Honors College 499DK - OpenSci Instrumentation&Data2

In this course, students will conduct an honors thesis by creating an instrument to pursue a biological science research question. Students will be encouraged to coordinate with an existing research enterprise on campus. In the first semester, students will develop a thesis proposal and construct a prototype instrument. During the semester, students will explore case studies about creating/deploying instruments combined with hands-on activities to develop technical skills for instrument development. Technical lessons will lead students through two instrumentation platforms (Raspberry Pi and Arduino) on how to collect, log, and analyze data from analog and digital sensors. During the second semester, students will use Agile project management techniques to collaboratively build, test, and deploy finished versions of their instruments and conduct iterative rounds of calibration and data collection to assemble a data set that bears on their research question. By the end of the course, students will complete and defend an individual honors thesis using data collected with their instrument and create an "instructable", supplemented with imagery or video, that describes their instrument, how it works, and how to make one.