HiSPARC is a very successful outreach project where students do interesting research in an international scientific collaboration. As such it is a nice example of successful citizen science; i.e. the actual research is done by the students themselves. The scientists only facilitate the research and answer questions but do not do any of the data analysis.

When the project launched, it had an initial goal of attacting two schools but has far exceeded this; there should be 10 schools registered for the 2012 - 2013 academic year. If you would like to join the project, please contact Dr Jaap Velthuis at jaap.velthuis@bristol.ac.uk. 

The project's successful approach to recruiting schools is outlined below, including presentations / documentation that was used to generate buy-in:

Recruiting Schools

To recruit schools, the project team:

1. Spoke to individual Physics teachers - This was to gain a better idea of schools' curricula and how HiSPARC might complement it.

2. Promoted HiSPARC through an existing outreach event - Once a year, the Particle Physics team at Bristol organise a Particle Physics masterclass (attended by 10 schools and 200 students). The project team used this masterclass as an opportunity to talk to students and teachers about what they thought of the project and what a realistic time frame for implementation would be. They also discussed what a reasonable contribution from a school might be for a cosmic ray detector.

3. Recruited a Dutch trainee teacher with a lot of experience in the project to translate and adapt the already available teacher and student HiSPARC material for the UK school system - This material will soon be available through the Netherlands' HiSPARC website.

4. Organised a launch event at the University - Of 50 schools in and around Bristol that were invited, 15 attended. During the evening, the project was explained in details - the contracts, the funding, the teaching materials and the availability of the trainee teacher. An Institute of Physics (IOP) representative spoke about associated funding opportunities and somebody from the university's legal team discussed contracts.

Three membership options for schools have been set-up:

1. Gold - Buy your own detector system (£5,000)
2. Silver - Rent your own detector system (£300 p.a.)
3. Bronze - Partake in project but without a detector system (£200 p.a.)

Schools signing up for a Silver or Bronze membership are obliged by contract to try to generate funding to upgrade to Gold. Schools sign up for a long term commitment; this is achieved by charging a delivery and a pick up fee for the detector systems, making it undesirable to leave the project.

Through this link you can access presentations providing an overview of the HiSPARC project that were given at the launch event, alongside:

• Examples of things that can be done by students with HiSPARC
• Membership agreements for schools
• Example contract templates with schools
• IOP funding opportunities
• A presentation on funding models