Digital portfolio
The students at Grade 7 and above who are qualified for the Grand Final should prepare a Google Site (see a template here) to serve as a Digital Portfolio including the section for Firstep [YEAR] Project Report. This portfolio is optional for the school round but highly encouraged. The digital portfolio must have the following sections:
- Home page
- This page includes the name of the researcher, the school and the city, and it links to the project slides, photos and video to give a quick glimpse of the research.
- About me
- This page includes some details about the researcher or the research team.
- Firstep project abstract
- The abstract is a brief overview of the project. It should not be more than 1 page and should include the project title, a statement of the purpose, a hypothesis, a brief description of the procedure, and the results. A copy of the abstract must be submitted on the website of the competition during registration.
- Hypothesis
- The introduction is a statement of your purpose, along with background information that led you to make this study. It should contain a brief statement of your hypothesis based on your research. In other words, it should state what information or knowledge you had that led you to hypothesize the answer to the project’s problem question. Make references to information or experiences that led you to choose the project’s purpose.
- Procedure
- You should describe all details of the procedures that you used to collect data, and make observations. Procedures should include a list of the materials used and the amount of each and the procedural steps are in order. Your written methods should be detailed enough so that someone would be able to repeat the experiment from the information in your paper. You can also include detailed photographs or drawings.
- Data and results
- It should include all measurements and observations that you took during each experiment and analysis of collected data. Graphs, tables, and charts created from your data should be labeled. If there is a large amount of data, you may choose to put most of it in an appendix, which can be placed in a separate binder or notebook. If you do separate the material, a summary of the data should be placed in the data section of the report. You should compare your results with published data, commonly held beliefs, and/or expected results. Your discussion should include possible errors. Also, discuss what you would do differently to improve this project in the future and what other experiments should be conducted.
- Conclusion
- The conclusion summarizes, in about one page or less, what you discovered based on your experimental results. The conclusion states the hypothesis and indicates whether the data supports it. The conclusion can also include a brief description of plans for exploring ideas for future experiments. Also, it contains practical applications of the project.
- References
- A bibliography is a listing of the resources and references used during the research of your project. It should include information about the magazines and books you used. That information is organized so that interested readers could seek out and find the books and articles you refer to. In the case of a book, you must supply the title of the book, its author, publishing company, the city where the publishing company is located, and the date the book was published. For a magazine article, you must supply the title of the article, the author, the magazine it appeared in, the date of the magazine issue, the volume of the magazine, and the pages the article appeared on.
- Video presentation
- Embed your YouTube Project video here for viewers to watch your presentation. Please refer to the video section of the regulations.
- Feedback
- This page will include a feedback form for your visitors to rank your project and to give you some suggestions for further improvements.
- Achievements
- This page includes your achievements.