Contributions from citizen science to science education: an examination of a biodiversity citizen science project with schools in Central Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (17) ◽  
pp. 2078-2098 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Kelemen-Finan ◽  
Martin Scheuch ◽  
Silvia Winter
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ginger Tsueng ◽  
Arun Kumar ◽  
Steven M. Nanis ◽  
Andrew I Su

AbstractCitizen science is the participation in scientific research by members of the public, and it is an increasingly valuable tool for both scientists and educators. For researchers, citizen science is a means of more quickly investigating questions which would otherwise be time-consuming and costly to study. For educators, citizen science offers a means to engage students in actual research and improve learning outcomes. Since most citizen science projects are usually designed with research goals in mind, many lack the necessary educator materials for successful integration in a formal science education (FSE) setting. In an ideal world, researchers and educators would build the necessary materials together; however, many researchers lack the time, resources, and networks to create these materials early on in the life of a citizen science project. For resource-poor projects, we propose an intermediate entry point for recruiting from the educational setting: community service or service learning requirements (CSSLRs). Many schools require students to participate in community service or service learning activities in order to graduate. When implemented well, CSSLRs provide students with growth and development opportunities outside the classroom while contributing to the community and other worthwhile causes. However, CSSLRs take time, resources, and effort to implement well. Just as citizen science projects need to establish relationships to transition well into formal science education, schools need to cultivate relationships with community service organizations. Students and educators at schools with CSSLRs where implementation is still a work in progress may be left with a burdensome requirement and inadequate support. With the help of a volunteer fulfilling a CSSLR, we investigated the number of students impacted by CSSLRs set at different levels of government and explored the qualifications needed for citizen science projects to fulfill CSSLRs by examining the explicitly-stated justifications for having CSSLRs, surveying how CSSLRs are verified, and using these qualifications to demonstrate how an online citizen science project, Mark2Cure, could use this information to meet the needs of students fulfilling CSSLRs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 56-82
Author(s):  
Ginger Tsueng ◽  
Arun Kumar ◽  
Steven Max Nanis ◽  
Andrew I Su

Citizen science is an increasingly valuable tool for both scientists and educators. For researchers, citizen science is a means of more quickly investigating questions which would otherwise be time-consuming and costly to study. For educators, citizen science offers a means to engage students in actual research and improve learning outcomes. Since most citizen science projects are usually designed with research goals in mind, many lack the necessary educator materials for successful integration in a formal science education (FSE) setting. In an ideal world, researchers and educators would build the necessary materials together; however, many researchers lack the time, resources, and networks to create these materials early on in the life of a citizen science project. For resource-poor projects, we propose an intermediate entry point for recruiting from the educational setting: community service or service learning requirements (CSSLRs). Many schools require students to participate in community service or service learning activities in order to graduate. When implemented well, CSSLRs provide students with growth and development opportunities outside the classroom while contributing to the community and other worthwhile causes. However,  CSSLRs take time, resources, and effort to implement well. Just as citizen science projects need to establish relationships to transition well into formal science education, schools need to cultivate relationships with community service organizations. Students and educators at schools with CSSLRs where implementation is still a work in progress may be left with a burdensome requirement and inadequate support. With the help of a volunteer fulfilling a CSSLR, we investigated the number of students impacted by CSSLRs set at different levels of government and explored the qualifications needed for citizen science projects to fulfill CSSLRs by examining the explicitly-stated justifications for having CSSLRs, surveying how CSSLRs are verified, and using these qualifications to demonstrate how an online citizen science project, Mark2Cure, could use this information to meet the needs of students fulfilling CSSLRs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 881-893
Author(s):  
José Luís Araújo ◽  
Carla Morais ◽  
João Carlos Paiva

The promotion of positive attitudes towards science is an important goal of science education. This research aimed to identify students' attitudes towards science and whether their participation within a citizen science project has contributed to positive attitudinal changes. So, an attitudinal scale was developed, validated, and applied (as a pre and post-test) to 574 students aged between 12 and 14 years old. Positive attitudes towards science were recorded from the outset among children of both groups. Students' participation within the experimental group enhanced relevant positive attitudinal changes at the level of the critical analysis dimension, related to the perception of skills development such as questioning or critical thinking. Furthermore, positive attitudinal changes were achieved within the affinity dimension, related to perceived self-efficacy and appreciation of science and science classes. Positive attitudinal changes towards science among students indicate that citizen science contributes to enhance affective and attitudinal domains of their scientific literacy. Keywords: attitudes towards science scale, attitudinal changes, citizen science, science education, water quality monitoring


Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 309
Author(s):  
Rhian A. Salmon ◽  
Samuel Rammell ◽  
Myfanwy T. Emeny ◽  
Stephen Hartley

In this paper, we focus on different roles in citizen science projects, and their respective relationships. We propose a tripartite model that recognises not only citizens and scientists, but also an important third role, which we call the ‘enabler’. In doing so, we acknowledge that additional expertise and skillsets are often present in citizen science projects, but are frequently overlooked in associated literature. We interrogate this model by applying it to three case studies and explore how the success and sustainability of a citizen science project requires all roles to be acknowledged and interacting appropriately. In this era of ‘wicked problems’, the nature of science and science communication has become more complex. In order to address critical emerging issues, a greater number of stakeholders are engaging in multi-party partnerships and research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. Within this context, explicitly acknowledging the role and motivations of everyone involved can provide a framework for enhanced project transparency, delivery, evaluation and impact. By adapting our understanding of citizen science to better recognise the complexity of the organisational systems within which they operate, we propose an opportunity to strengthen the collaborative delivery of both valuable scientific research and public engagement.


Author(s):  
Fernanda Beatriz Jordan Rojas Dallaqua ◽  
Fabio Augusto Faria ◽  
Alvaro Luiz Fazenda

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 564-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dick Kasperowski ◽  
Thomas Hillman

In the past decade, some areas of science have begun turning to masses of online volunteers through open calls for generating and classifying very large sets of data. The purpose of this study is to investigate the epistemic culture of a large-scale online citizen science project, the Galaxy Zoo, that turns to volunteers for the classification of images of galaxies. For this task, we chose to apply the concepts of programs and antiprograms to examine the ‘essential tensions’ that arise in relation to the mobilizing values of a citizen science project and the epistemic subjects and cultures that are enacted by its volunteers. Our premise is that these tensions reveal central features of the epistemic subjects and distributed cognition of epistemic cultures in these large-scale citizen science projects.


Author(s):  
José Luís Araújo ◽  
Carla Morais ◽  
João Paiva

The active participation of citizens in scientific research, through citizen science, has been proven successful. However, knowledge on the potential of citizen science within formal chemistry learning, at the conceptual...


2019 ◽  
pp. 186-190
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mee

Frank Drake devised the Drake equation to estimate the number of advanced civilizations in the galaxy with the aim of gathering support for SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). The earliest attempts to detect radio signals from extraterrestrials date back to the 1960s. Paul Allen has funded the Allen Telescope, Array which is dedicated to searching for such signals. When complete it will include 350 radio dishes. The citizen science project SETI@Home allows anyone with a home PC to participate in analysing the data amassed by the SETI project.


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