Introduction
The central objective of the research laboratory is to introduce the student to a rigorous process of inquiry through a "hands-on" experience. The laboratories are coordinated with the lectures of the course, and offer the student various alternative research areas in which to do team (to be defined) or individual research for the course. These alternatives will be presented in a session and will focus on urban growth management or natural resource management as the research domains for this semester (see course outline).

Projects
There are six possible alternatives from which the student can develop the semester research project for the course. The overall domains that are of greatest interest to us are education (learning) and planning / design (conflict resolution):

Expectations and Research Domains
The purpose of the laboratories explorations as the semester projects of the course is to research ways of decision support in order to address student defined research problems. Again, as mentioned in the syllabus, the course expects to support the educational and planning/ design goals by introducing the students to (1) innovative methodological concepts and approaches, as well as (2) researching interesting questions. Therefore the project alternatives above are expected to be developed on questions within one of the following three urban and regional planning domains:

• Environmental decay due to rampant growth of urban regions and cities (locational analysis and sustainable urban development)

• Management of natural systems viewed in terms of a resource-hazards perspective and focusing on water systems (natural hazards management or education)

• Participation and citizen empowerment in urban and regional development actions (conflict resolution through informed compromises, or training through distributed knowledge)

The learning and planning/design domains, in turn, can focus on a great number of concerns which will match the students interests, e.g., environmental concerns (natural systems and their interactions), urban systems such as transportation, housing and land use (or their interactions), or even education concerns such as public education on sustainability or elementary school natural science education. All these examples can draw from experiences we have had with different entities such as L3D on going work, the COSCO and the natural resource management efforts in Costa Rica, or here in the county with the Boulder County Healthy and Sustainable Community Initiative (BCHCI).

Semester Project Activities
For the research project in any selected alternative, the student will be required to develop the following:

1. A research proposal which includes:
   • WHAT - a statement of the problem, along with the operational definition of terms as to dependent and independent variables. For example a psychological aspect relative to planning or design such as privacy, for which you would like to research if perceptions of privacy change through the manipulation of physical variables of concern to designers or planners. These physical variables may be property lines, area, or functional relationship of spaces in buildings or districts in cities, etc.;

   • WHY - the planning reasons why you want to explore what you are proposing and why the particular variables. It is from this part of the proposal that you derive the implications to planning from your proposed study; and

   • HOW - a method showing how you will do and prove your point, i.e. the phases of the study, your simulation/game models, and the instrument(s) to be used in gathering the data.

   • The proposal will be developed during the first part of the course. The lab times during this first part will be used to familiarize yourself with the research and to develop the research proposal. A final copy will be handed in as per the course outline (Week 3, discussed on Week 4).

2. Development decision support tools which may be used to research your problem such as games, 3D simulations, or computer simulations (Development Weeks 5-7 and due on Weeks 8, presentation to class on Weeks 8 and 9 during hands-on periods). The student will be introduced to various examples of such tools in the Urban Simulations and Information Systems Lab, Room #215 and will present them over the course (see small projects).

3. Development of survey instruments to collect information with the tool (Due, discussed and pre-test during Week 10). This will entail pre-testing these instruments before you actually start to collect your data. These final instruments and your models will be presented to the class (Week 16).

4. Collection of Data using the research tool(s) and survey instruments developed (Week 11).

5. Analysis of the data using very basic statistics, e.g. frequencies, tables, graphs. You will be introduced to SPSSPC as a statistical package which can be used for this analysis (Week s 12 and 13).

6. Write a final research report which includes an abstract, an introduction utilizing the proposal, the data, analysis of the data and findings, and a conclusion including the implications of findings on relevant planning aspects of the topic (e.g. theory, policies, or facility programming and management) and the limitations of the research methodology. Preparation of this reports starts prior to the final presentations and is due the scheduled exam day for this course (Weeks 14-15).

7. Presentation of Results from your research. This is usually done to a panel of critics and represents a summary of your project, its findings, and implications to design or planning (Week 16).

THE FINAL REPORT ON THE RESEARCH PROJECT is due by noon of scheduled exam day for this course.

Small Projects
There is already a basis for departure with the hands-on activities of the laboratories for the course. All students are expected participate on these projects through the following activities:

• taking one of the following existing tools to learn in detail what they are for, why are they contributions to support decision making and learning, and how do they work

• lead a hands-on session of the laboratories in order for the members of the course to participate using the tool selected, and

• participate in hands-on sessions of other tools introduced by class members

On Sustainability
The Ecological Footprint (physical game)
Water, Energy and Waste: Sustainable Systems? (physical game)

On Water and Natural Resource Education
Flooding Mitigation(physical and computational simulation)
The River (physical simulation game)

On Computational Simulations for Planning and Design
Simcity (computer simulation)
Simearth (computer simulation)
Simtower (computer simulation)
The HOP (computer simulation)

On City and Urban Planning and Design
The Community Land Use Game (CLUG) (a physical simulation -game)
The Susceptibility to Change Analysis I (STC) (a physical simulation)
The Susceptibility to Change Analysis II (STC) (a physical simulation)
The GMSimultor and the Massing Simulation (physical and computational simulation)
The Intensity of Preference in Design (a physical simulation)

On Neighborhood Planning
Mr. Roger's Sustainable Neighborhood (computational and physical simulation-game)
The Flatirons: Neighborhood Change Game (physical game)

There may be other simulations/games in the SIMLab or that you may know elsewhere and may have an interest in utilizing.