<div dir="ltr"><span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-7ee7e590-7fff-d001-76a7-621c7d3c9250"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Dear Lookit research community/CHS community -</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></p><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;white-space:pre-wrap">(And apologies for those of you who may be getting two very similar emails!) </span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">I’m writing with some exciting news - </span><a href="https://lookit.mit.edu/" style="text-decoration-line:none"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Lookit</span></a><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> and </span><a href="https://childrenhelpingscience.com/" style="text-decoration-line:none"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Children Helping Science</span></a><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> are joining forces!  The reason we are writing today is to introduce the research communities to each other, and to begin learning about your thoughts, ideas, or concerns about how we’ll be working together.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Nothing about how either site works or appears will be changing today, and we are keenly interested in making sure that any changes we do make will continue to serve the researchers who have put so much time and effort into designing and recruiting studies on both sites. </span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">For those of you who haven’t used Children Helping Science before, it’s a website launched in early 2020 as a response to the COVID pandemic by the </span><a href="https://childrenhelpingscience.com/parc" style="text-decoration-line:none"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Parent Researcher Collaborative</span></a><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">. Its primary purpose was to help as many labs as possible quickly move their developmental research online, supporting as many different kinds of online research as possible. It has been very successful in providing a shared platform for researchers to advertise their studies to interested families, and gives researchers a lot of control over their communication and study workflows with participants.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The leadership of these two platforms has always overlapped, and although each platform has a somewhat different focus, we believe that there are big benefits to working together more closely. The first would be to simplify the experience for both families and researchers: right now, families go to two websites with partially overlapping lists of studies, and researchers who want to recruit from the widest possible audience have to manage two separate postings. The second would be to reduce the cost of making improvements (building just once instead of twice) and make sure that these improvements reach all researchers and families. Finally, the research community will be able to work together more closely to share ideas and solve technical and scientific problems, using Lookit’s existing Slack space.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Right now, you can help us by </span><a href="https://forms.gle/CwtJAWe8CjyCMzpD8" style="text-decoration-line:none"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">sharing any thoughts</span></a><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> you have about either CHS, Lookit, or the combination of the two. The leadership teams of both CHS and Lookit are hard at work planning this collaboration, and we look forward to hearing from you!</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Best, </span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The Lookit & Children Helping Science Teams</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Melissa Kline Struhl (Lookit Executive Director)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Laura Schulz (PI, MIT Early Childhood Cognition Lab, Lookit’s home)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The Parent and Researcher Collaborative (PARC): Elizabeth Bonawitz, Hyowon Gweon, Julian Jara-Ettinger, Candice Mills, Laura Schulz, and Mark Sheskin </span></p></span><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Melissa Kline Struhl</div><div>Lookit Executive Director</div><div>Research Scientist, MIT Brain & Cognitive Sciences</div><div><a href="mailto:mekline@mit.edu" target="_blank">mekline@mit.edu</a></div><div><a href="http://lookit.mit.edu" target="_blank">https://lookit.mit.edu/</a></div><div dir="ltr"><div><a href="http://www.melissakline.net" target="_blank">http://www.melissaklinestruhl.com/</a><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><br><div style="display:inline"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>