Leveraging Mobile Technology to Engage College Students in Scientific Research

College students in the social sciences are required to learn quantitative research methods and statistics. Unfortunately, many fail to see the relevance of these courses, and are often anxious about them. In an effort to increase students' engagement in the research process, we developed Ruzo -- a mobile scientific inquiry platform. Ruzo enables instructors and students to create research projects as custom mobile apps, collect data on the go, and visualize the data using a web-based interactive tool. Ruzo was designed based on five guidelines, derived from interviews with domain experts: guide students through all stages of research; reduce anxiousness; encourage active learning; connect to students' everyday lives; and adapt the system to the needs of the instructor. A user study showed that Ruzo was easy to use, and students expressed interest in research, thereby demonstrating the potential of mobile technology to scaffold scientific inquiry.

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