There's A First Time For Everything SOAR club pv

Robin's heart pounded harshly and quickly, it almost felt like a stampede charging through his chest. Today was the first workshop he'd host for SOAR Con Prep—Student-Organized Annual Research Convention Preparation—a club he created towards the end of his first year. It was pretty late in the semester, so Robin didn't bother rushing activities. He instead decided to wait till he advances a year, so he can prepare workshop drafts in the summer.

Robin never thought he'd organize a project that requires leadership and socialization in some sense. The title "Club President" never suited him. Even after some members have enthusiastically joined, Robin still felt like a child wearing his father's lab coat—pretending to be professional and mature, but ultimately will fail miserably and fall into the depths of awkwardness.

No matter what's going through his mind, the first workshop arrived. Robin had came to the empty classroom quite early, both to familiarize himself with the environment so he feels more comfortable pacing and writing on the boards, and to present the image of a diligent club leader and set a good example.

As his club members walked through the door, Robin greeted each of them with a polite nod. After a few minutes, the clock hit their scheduled meeting time. Robin took a deep breath and opened his mouth: "Hallo, everyone. I'm glad to see that you all came here despite this being a . . . unusual occurrence." The young Ravenclaw wiped his somewhat sweaty palms with a handkerchief, then picked up a piece of chalk and started writing on the board in front of the classroom. "As you hopefully have already seen on the calendar, today we will talk about the basics of research. What is research? What is the general process? That kind of thing."

Robin turned around to face everyone, gulping as he realizes once again that they all had their eyes on him. "I know some or most . . . actually maybe all of you have some idea what research is. You may already have experience. However, I will still go over these fundamentals just in case any of you aren't familiar. Experts can also see this as a review. Now, let's get straight to it."

As Robin moves a few steps away from the board, club members can now see the words he wrote on it in full. It is a string of words connected by arrows, seemingly outlining a flow of some sort.

Observe Question Research Hypothesize Experiment Analyze Conclude

"First, you need to observe something. This doesn't necessarily mean 'look'. A figurative explanation of this stage I like to use is 'unearthing a gem'. You go about your daily life, doing what you normally do, while you stumble upon a lump in the dirt. You feel like there's something more to it, so you start digging. When you finally feel the hardness of a gemstone pressing against your fingers, that's when you found a topic that interests you."

Robin's face heated up a little after that explanation. He didn't want anyone to feel like they're being treated as kids who need fairy tales to comprehend life lessons, but that was the best description of the observation stage he could think of. Oh well, hope no one took offense.

"The next stage is formulating a research question. This is pretty straightforward, you observed something of interest earlier, now you ask a question about it. For example, if I observe that it often rains right after my neighbor's baby brother cried, I may want to ask if Neil can sense rain coming, if he causes rain, or if there's at least a correlation between him crying and rain falling." That was true, by the way. His childhood friend Noah's baby brother Neil was at one point speculated to be a seer, and they still don't know if that's the case yet.

After pausing for a moment, Robin continued down the list: "Third, you see I wrote the word 'research' on here. You might think 'isn't the whole thing research?' and yes you are correct. This particular stage, however, is known as 'background research' or 'literature review'. The term 'background research' is pretty self-explanatory, you now have a question you want to answer, so you need more information in order to do that. 'Literature review' is a part of this, and I'm not talking about children's tales or Crime and Punishment, not that kind of literature. I mean literature as in previously published scholarly articles, documents, records, and a bunch of other stuff. Specific sources and their uses will be discussed in a later workshop along with citations and plagiarism, so uh . . . remember to come that day if you feel like this is something you want to know more about."

Robin paused to take a sip out of his water bottle, then quickly resumed his 'lecture': "After you gathered more information from previous research or primary sources, you'd probably have a vague idea regarding the answer to your question. Now you form a hypothesis, which is essentially a prediction of the answer that you need to prove in later steps. In more formal contexts, you have a 'null hypothesis' which is the status quo, and an 'alternative hypothesis' which is the statement you want to prove. An example of a null hypothesis would be 'Hogwarts students' DADA grades are the same as the international average', while a potential alternative hypothesis in this case may be 'Hogwarts students' DADA grades are above the international average'." Robin sure hoped that was true, but Durmstrang likely has a better overall understanding of anything related to the Dark Arts, since he had heard that the academy actively teaches them.

"Next is what people might initially associate with research, the experiment phase. Well, it technically doesn't have to be an 'experiment'." The boy added "vs. Observation" underneath, then pointed at each while explaining their differences. "Experiments indicate an intervention, like giving medicine to a group of people but not others. Observations are just . . . observations. Seeing how patients do on their own." This of course posed the question of "so do the control group in experiments or participants in an observation just not get the newest treatment", but that's a discussion best left for the ethics workshop. Robin didn't plan on diving into it unless someone asked.

The Ravenclaw wasn't as nervous as when he first started the semi-lecture. Still, he was relieved after seeing that there are only two phases left to explain. Then he could sit back and passively wait for inquiries and accidents. Robin took a deep breath and looked at the chalky words on the board.

"Now we have the analysis phase. This is my personal favorite, it's where I combine my previous knowledge and new understandings to form a breakdown of my research question. It's where you feel like you're contributing to the academic world of your choosing—anyways," Robin cut himself off before babbling on into oblivion, "Depending on your topic and methods, the analysis can look insanely different. If you're studying architecture of the Hogwarts Castle, it might contain a bunch of physics and calculations and all that, but it might also be reviews on the artistic significance, or comparisons to Muggle historical buildings. To put it more generically, your analysis section could be filled with numbers, pictures, words, or something else I currently fail to think of."

Robin slowly walked a few more paces to arrive at the end of the string of words he wrote, tapping on the last one. Something he probably didn't even need to explain, since even novice researchers would know the definition of this word from other situations. Well, at least he thought so.

"The conclusion. As the word suggests, it's a synthesis of everything you've learned from the previous steps. A summary and your answer to your initial question." Robin paused, thinking if there was anything else he could say about it. Well, he can't think of anything right now. Robin might be a bad teacher, he evidently isn't great at improvising teachable content. "So, now that we've covered the basics, I'll leave you guys to brainstorm the topics you want to work on this year. Try to come up with at least one research question . . . not that you have to decide its finality right now, of course. Some of you might not even plan on presenting in June, but that's perfectly fine. Now's just a time to think and prepare, and ask questions if you feel like." He gestured towards the quill and stack of parchment at the front-most desk, "Feel free to take these if you need to take notes. I'll be uh . . . sitting right here."

Reducio

Feel free to mention anything Robin said or did in this RP. You can also mention him standing in the corner of the classroom when you are brainstorming topics. He would be observing all members to make sure nothing's wrong, and he will look out for anyone who has questions. If your character interacted with Robin before, you can also RP him greeting you and minimal small talk. However, I ask that you leave answering questions to me in my closing post.

ps. all feedback are welcome in the club thread or my owls. hope you enjoyed this to some extent:)