This report was completed by the Program Evaluation Research Group at Endicott College in October 2013. It describes the outcomes and impacts of a four-year, NSF-funded project called Go Botany: Integrated Tools to Advance Botanical Learning (grant number 0840186). Go Botany focuses on fostering increased interest in and knowledge of botany among youth and adults in New England. This was being done through the creation of an online flora for the region, along with the development of related tools, including PlantShare, and a user-friendly interface for ‘smartphones’. In January 2012, the PI
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Judah LeblangNew England Wild Flower Society
Across the globe, citizen science projects are becoming increasingly poised to address social and environmental challenges and answer broad scientific questions. Although rapidly increasing in number, these projects need easy-to-use software tools for data management, analysis, and visualization to be successful. This project transforms how citizen science projects unfold locally, regionally, and globally by creating software that supports the full spectrum of project activities. It empowers projects to ask and answer their own local questions while contributing data critical to larger-scale issues. These tools will allow projects to announce training events; track volunteers; create datasheets; enter, review, analyze, and visualize data; publish reports; discover resources; integrate data; and ensure that data are contributed to repositories (e.g., DataONE, NEON, GBIF, HydroShare, and EOL). Tools will be made available to citizen science projects and will be delivered as reusable software elements for use in existing websites; as website features on CitSci.org; and as Application Programming Interface (API) services and mobile applications. The tools will expand the national reach, local appeal, computational abilities, visualization techniques, statistical analysis capabilities, and interoperability of the nations' cyber-infrastructure. Using participatory design and agile methods, the project will: (1) develop reusable software elements that citizen science organizations can embed into their own websites, (2) harden and expand the functionality and capabilities of CitSci.org through new website features, and (3) extend the APIs of CitSci.org and develop associated mobile applications to increase system and tool interoperability. The target user communities will include citizen science project coordinators. It will deliver customizable tools and services related to all project activities and engage projects across a wide array of disciplines. Project coordinators will be able to customize all tools developed to suit their specific project needs. Adoption and use of the tools developed will create a cyber-ready workforce capable of collecting, contributing, and applying high quality ecological, geophysical, social, and human health related observations to solve real-world problems. These broader impacts will help the citizen science community better understand effective models of public engagement to ensure more impactful application of citizen science to societal challenges.
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Gregory NewmanStacy LynnMelinda Laituri
COASSTal Communities of Science is a citizen-science project whose goal is to increase the scientific and educational reach of a highly successful, action-oriented and rigorous citizen science program - the Coastal Observation And Seabird Survey Team (COASST), by adding a new data module on marine debris that will feature innovative technological approaches including mobile apps and web-based crowdsourcing. The marine debris module will complement an existing module on beached birds, allowing COASST to more completely assess coastal environmental health. For instance, marine debris data, focused particularly on issues of invasive species, harm to wildlife, and debris sourcing, will be immediately useful in marine science and resource management. Once designed and vetted by professional scientists and science educators, the new module will be implemented by citizen scientists in over 100 in-community trainings conducted throughout the COASST geographic range, from northern California to the coast of Alaska, including remote coastal communities with limited access to scientific information. Over 1,000 new participants will join the program, bringing the total number of active volunteers to 2,000 within the 4 years of the project. A complementary social science research component will advance the field of informal STEM learning by focusing on the factors facilitating recruitment and especially retention in citizen science projects, using COASST as a model. The current models of science learning in informal contexts will be extended by bringing them together with conceptual approaches to the development of interest, communities of practice, and activity theory. Research will specifically focus on differences in individual motivation to join COASST; follow participants as they enter the program and eventually become central members of the COASST community of practice; and assess the degree to which individual, programmatic and socio-cultural factors contribute to participant retention. A linked independent evaluation will assess the depth of learning individuals experience as a function the training and materials they receive, and amount and type of data they collect. Both research and evaluation components will utilize pre/post surveys, interviews, and longitudinal journaling.
SciGirls and Citizen Science: Real Data, Real Kids, Real Discoveries SciGirls is showcasing Citizen Science! From their own backyards to a NASA research center, the bright, relatable, real girls featured on the groundbreaking PBS series are seriously into science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. And Season Three of SciGirls finds these STEM adventurers tracking toads, counting clouds and much more, all in the name of citizen science. The brand-new season of the Emmy-winning show, featuring six stand-out episodes, debuted April 2015 on PBS KIDS (check local listings) and online at http://pbskids.org/scigirls. Citizen science is the newest STEM frontier that engages the general public –and kids – in real science. Scientists worldwide invite ordinary people—like the SciGirls—to observe and record data about everything from birds to beaches, monarch butterflies to maple trees. The data is then shared with scientists, who use it to generate new scientific knowledge. In six exciting new episodes, middle school girls and their female STEM professional mentors hit the great outdoors, cataloging frog calls, tracking the changing seasons, verifying satellite imagery of clouds, monitoring fragile butterfly populations, improving urban bird habitats, and advocating for healthy oceans. In addition, animated characters Izzie and Jake are back and finding themselves in sticky situations that can only be solved by STEM—and the SciGirls. When the SciGirls share their data with professional scientists, they save the day for Izzie and Jake and help save the environment! The new mobile-friendly website at http://pbskids.org/scigirls lets kids play new games, watch episodes and videos, and connect with fellow STEM explorers anywhere, anytime. “Collaboration is the key to successful citizen science,” said SciGirls executive producer Richard Hudson. “Since SciGirls’ beginning, working together—making discoveries, mistakes and friends—is one of the important research-based methods we use to engage girls around STEM. This new season underscores the importance of collaboration within the scientific research community and workforce. SciGirls is fortunate to have powerful partners advising us about citizen science, including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, NASA and SciStarter.” The SciGirls creative team is headed by Twin Cities Public Television’s Director of Science Content Richard Hudson, Executive Producer of the long-running PBS children’s science series Newton's Apple and creator of DragonflyTV and the SciGirls initiative. Animation is created by Soup2Nuts, producers of PBS’ WordGirl. Strategic partners for the new series are the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Rick Bonney co-PI, and the National Girls Collaborative Project, co-PI Karen Peterson. SciGirls is made possible by a major grant from the National Science Foundation. Additional funding is provided by INFOR, Northrop Grumman Foundation, and PPG Industries Foundation.
The Sharing the Universe (STU) project was funded by NSF in 2007 to develop and make available resources and supports to deepen and broaden the education and public outreach (EPO) of amateur astronomy clubs who are members of the Night Sky Network. To achieve this goal, the project funded a development group: the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and a research group: Institute for Learning Innovation. These two groups were to work as partners, both to study the barriers and challenges that existed for amateur astronomy clubs to educational outreach, and to apply what was learned from those
Our Year 3 formative evaluation of Go Botany, a four-year NSF-funded project focused on botanical learning, centered on tracking the continued development and the launch of the Go Botany Simple Key, which contains botanical data on more than 1200 native plants in the New England region. The project is a collaboration between the New England Wild Flower Society and three partnering institutions: The Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, VT; The Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset, Maine; and the Yale Peabody Museum on Natural History in New Haven, CT. During Year 3, the Go Botany Simple Key was
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Judah LeblangNew England Wild Flower Society
The YardMap Network (see www.yardmap.org) is an NSF-funded citizen science project at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which will allow participants to map their habitat management and carbon neutral practices in backyards and parks, interact socially within the network, and display their activities and carbon footprints in an online platform such as Google maps. In 2010, the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, conducted a front-end evaluation to assess the following evaluation questions: 1. What are gardeners', and birders', citizen
The Citizen Science Central site developed by CLO clearly meets its goal of providing guidance and resources to individuals and organizations engaged in, or interested in undertaking, citizen science, volunteer monitoring, or participatory action research initiatives. The site embodies the ideas and insights generated by the Citizen Science Toolkit conference. In terms of the evaluation objectives, the evidence from the user surveys show that the site meets both of the standards listed below. Ease of use, sufficiency, and appropriateness of Citizen Science Central content Quality and
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Stephanie ThompsonCornell University
You can use CyberTracker on a Smartphone or handheld computer to record any type of observation. CyberTracker, which requires no programming skills, allows you to customize a series of screens for your own data collection needs. Our vision is to enable you to be part of a worldwide environmental monitoring network. Our mission is to help you improve environmental monitoring by increasing the efficiency of data gathering and to improve observer reliability.
Calflora is a web site you can use to learn about about plants that grow in the wild in California: both native plants and weeds. You can enter the common or scientific name of a plant to view an illustrated table of plants that match the name you entered. Click one of the plants in the table to learn a lot of detail about that plant, in particular, where it's been observed in California. You can also enter a place and get an illustrated list of the plants that grow "here". You define "here" by zip code, place name, or any of a number of other ways. Then click "Search for Plants" to get an illustrated list of plants.
This presentation is one of three focus point presentations delivered on day one of the Citizen Science Toolkit Conference (at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York on June 20-23, 2007) as part of the opening session titled “Citizen Science Challenges and Opportunities.” Phillips describes two interconnected citizen science project by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, both of which are research and audience driven.