A Design-based Study of Citizen Inquiry for Geology

Human Computation, 2016

In recent years, citizen science has grown in popularity due to a number of reasons, including the emphasis on informal learning and creativity potential associated with these initiatives. Citizen science projects address research questions from various domains, ranging from Ecology to Astronomy. Due to the advancement of communication technologies, which makes outreach and engagement of wider communities easier, scientists are keen to turn their own research into citizen science projects. However, the development, deployment and management of these projects remains challenging. One of the most important challenges is building the project itself. There is no single tool or framework, which guides the step-by-step development of the project, since every project has specific characteristics, such as geographical constraints or volunteers' mode of participation. Therefore, in this article, we present a series of conceptual frameworks for categorisation, decision and deployment, wh...

Making visible the process of user participation in online crowdsourced initiatives has been shown to help new users understand the norms of participation . However, in many settings, participants lack full access to others' work. Merging the theory of legitimate peripheral participation with Erickson and Kellogg's theory of social translucence we introduce the concept of practice proxies: traces of user participation in online environments that act as resources to orient newcomers towards the norms of practice. Through a combination of virtual and trace ethnography we explore how new users in two online citizen science projects engage with these traces of practice as a way of compensating for a lack of access to the process of the work itself. Our findings suggest that newcomers seek out practice proxies in the social features of the projects that highlight contextualized and specific characteristics of primary work practice.

Citizen science initiatives encourage volunteer participants to collect observations, interpret data and contribute to formal scientific projects. The growth of virtual citizen science (VCS) facilitated using websites and mobile apps since the mid-2000s has been driven by a combination of innovations in Web 2.0 and mobile technologies, growing scientific data flows without commensurate increases in the resources to handle them, and the desire of Internet-connected participants to contribute to collective outputs as one way to achieve satisfying use of their free time. However, the increasing availability of Internet-based activities requires individual VCS projects to compete for the attention of volunteer participants and promote their long-term retention as active virtual citizen scientists. This article examines what program and platform design principles might allow VCS initiatives to compete more effectively to engage volunteers, increase their productivity as project participants and retain contributors over time. A survey of key personnel engaged in managing a sample of VCS projects was conducted to identify the principles and practices they pursued for these purposes, and a heuristic evaluation of a sample of VCS projects was undertaken. Both focused on issues of volunteer engagement, website or app usability and participant retention. The results indicate that usability is the most straightforward goal to pursue; high ratings for engagement and retention appear much more difficult to attain consistently. We close by discussing the challenge facing VCS projects in the context of growing competition for the attention of Internet volunteers, suggesting that VCS initiatives should attend to recent literature on the motivations of virtual citizen scientists in order to sustain the necessary engagement and retention of those volunteers.

Citizen science, as a process of volunteer participation through crowdsourcing, facilitates the creation of mass data sets needed to address subtle and large-scale patterns in complex phenomena. Citizen science efforts in other field disciplines such as biology, geography, and astronomy indicate how new web-based interfaces can enhance and expand upon archaeologists’ existing platforms of volunteer engagement such as field schools, community archaeology, site stewardship, and professional–avocational partnerships. Archaeological research can benefit from the citizen science paradigm in four ways: fieldwork that makes use of widely available technologies such as mobile applications for photography and data upload; searches of large satellite image ollections for site identification and monitoring; rowdfunding; and crowdsourced computer entry of heritage data.

2015

The number of online citizen science projects has increased significantly over the past decade, yet some aspects of participation are poorly understood as is the motivation behind the involvement of the scientists who set up these projects, and the citizen scientists who take part. This thesis explores three different online citizen science projects (Foldit, Folding@home and Planet Hunters) using a case study approach and data collected through online surveys, interviews and participant observation. It explores the motivations that initiate and sustain participation, and it examines the various ways individuals can contribute to these projects. It also investigates how participants (both professional scientists and citizen scientists) interact online. A number of theoretical models of motivation and participation are considered. While many individuals register to take part in these projects, only a small proportion become active participants. These active citizen scientist volunteer...

The number of online citizen science projects has increased significantly over the past decade, yet some aspects of participation are poorly understood as is the motivation behind the involvement of the scientists who set up these projects, and the citizen scientists who take part. This thesis explores three different online citizen science projects (Foldit, Folding@home and Planet Hunters) using a case study approach and data collected through online surveys, interviews and participant observation. It explores the motivations that initiate and sustain participation, and it examines the various ways individuals can contribute to these projects. It also investigates how participants (both professional scientists and citizen scientists) interact online. A number of theoretical models of motivation and participation are considered. While many individuals register to take part in these projects, only a small proportion become active participants. These active citizen scientist volunteers are motivated to participate because they want to make a contribution to science or have a background interest in science. Scientists set up these projects in order to get help analysing large volumes of data, particularly those that require human pattern recognition or problem-solving skills. The complexity of the project task and the presence of certain technological features can affect how participants interact with each other, and how they contribute. Tasks that are complex are more likely to present opportunities for cooperation and collaboration, and may foster the development of online communities of practice. The findings of this research suggest that online citizen science projects have been important in making scientific research more open for a number of distributed volunteers. These individuals have responded to the challenges presented by these projects, increasing their scientific and technical understanding, and self-organising into various roles and teams in order to produce new knowledge.

Journal of Extension, 2014

Citizen science projects can serve as constructivist learning environments for programming focused on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for youth. Attributes of rich environments for active learning (REALs) provide a framework for design of Extension STEM learning environments. Guiding principles and design strategies for the University of Minnesota Extension's Driven to Discover: Enabling Authentic Inquiry through Citizen Science project demonstrate how education and investigations grounded in real-world citizen science projects can capitalize on REAL environments to generate meaningful STEM learning. Positive evaluation results support the efficacy of the design for enhancing youth science identity and practice.

2021

Abstract. Citizen science (CS) relies on cooperation with members of the public. This usually requires a lot of contact to reconcile the needs of the researchers and project staff with the user to retain an active user base. We explore with our CS web portal the potential of including the participants in the creation and design process of the portal. This is done by providing the users with easy access to our design and research staff and approaching people for qualitative feedback. To a large extent, our users do not have obvious ties to academic institutions, however, the vast majority of feedback comes from academics. We categorized the feedback, explored users’ backgrounds, and compared our active user retention to another CS project, which turns out to be comparable.

Online Citizen Science and the Widening of Academia, 2018

EDULEARN19 Proceedings, 2019

The engagement of volunteers to participate in scientific and monitoring activities has become increasingly popular. In Citizen Science, volunteers are contributing to scientific or monitoring processes by assisting with observations and classifications, or by creating data by e.g. monitoring species or air quality. I have studied the community of a Citizen Science initiative that uses passive (or participatory) sensing, where participants are collecting data particulate matter from small digital monitors for automatic sensing that are placed in their back yards. Even though the activities and outputs of the Citizen Science initiative are strictly technical and do not promote learning, the organization of a social media community could open up for participants to interact and engage further. My aim is to explore if participation in a Citizen Science initiative generates further engagement and informal learning. To do this, I used qualitative methods to study the participants of a Ci...