“Sleep – Third of Life”: a Citizen Science Project for High School Students

Citizen science is a research methodology in which members of the public collaborate with scientists. These projects benefit science by obtaining massive amount of data at minimal cost, while the participants acquire knowledge and skills, and enjoy being involved in scientific research. Today, there is a trend to integrate citizen science research in schools, as this integration allows students to experience all stages of research, from data collection to analysis. We have initiated a "citizen science" project on the topic of sleep, which is linked to the theme of our research laboratories. Our goal is to introduce the students to the subject of sleep and its importance to health, and at the same time to expose the students to the processual nature of science. The project entered now its third year, and is supported by the “Taking Citizen Science to School” (TCSS) center, which is run by the Technion and the University of Haifa. As part of the project, the students collect information about their sleep habits, meet with the scientists and analyze the data they have collected. Using their own data, the students can investigate the effect of a variety of factors on sleep habits, such as the effect of prolonged exposure to artificial light on the quality of their sleep. The project is suitable for 7th - 12th grades and can be integrated into the science curricula in the middle school and high school on the topic "healthy lifestyle".