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Benefits and challenges of incorporating citizen science into university education.

ABSTRACT: A common feature of many citizen science projects is the collection of data by unpaid contributors with the expectation that the data will be used in research. Here we report a teaching strategy that combined citizen science with inquiry-based learning to offer first year university students an authentic research experience. A six-year partnership with the Australian phenology citizen science program ClimateWatch has enabled biology students from the University of Western Australia to contribute phenological data on plants and animals, and to conduct the first research on unvalidated species datasets contributed by public and university participants. Students wrote scientific articles on their findings, peer-reviewed each other's work and the best articles were published online in a student journal. Surveys of more than 1500 students showed that their environmental engagement increased significantly after participating in data collection and data analysis. However, only 31% of students agreed with the statement that "data collected by citizen scientists are reliable" at the end of the project, whereas the rate of agreement was initially 79%. This change in perception was likely due to students discovering erroneous records when they mapped data points and analysed submitted photographs. A positive consequence was that students subsequently reported being more careful to avoid errors in their own data collection, and making greater efforts to contribute records that were useful for future scientific research. Evaluation of our project has shown that by embedding a research process within citizen science participation, university students are given cause to improve their contributions to environmental datasets. If true for citizen scientists in general, enabling participants as well as scientists to analyse data could enhance data quality, and so address a key constraint of broad-scale citizen science programs.

SUBMITTER: Mitchell N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5665417 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Benefits and challenges of incorporating citizen science into university education.

Mitchell Nicola N Triska Maggie M Liberatore Andrea A Ashcroft Linden L Weatherill Richard R Longnecker Nancy N

PloS one 20171101 11

A common feature of many citizen science projects is the collection of data by unpaid contributors with the expectation that the data will be used in research. Here we report a teaching strategy that combined citizen science with inquiry-based learning to offer first year university students an authentic research experience. A six-year partnership with the Australian phenology citizen science program ClimateWatch has enabled biology students from the University of Western Australia to contribute ...[more]

PMID: 29091933

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Project description:Millions of bird observations have been entered on online portals in the past 20 years either as checklists or arbitrary individual entries. While several hundred publications have been written on a variety of topics based on bird checklists worldwide, unstructured non-checklist observations have received little attention and praise by academia. In the present study we tested the suitability of non-checklist data to estimate key figures of large-scale migration phenology in four zones covering the whole of Finland. For that purpose, we analysed 10 years of ornithological non-checklist data including over 400 million. individuals of 115 bird species. We discuss bird- and human-induced effects to be considered in handling non-checklist data in this context and describe applied methodologies to address these effects. We calculated 5%, 50% and 95% percentile dates of spring and autumn migration period for all species in all four zones. For validation purposes we compared the temporal distributions of 43 bird species with migration phenology from standardized long-term ringing data in autumn of which 24 species (56%) showed similar medians. In a model approach, non-checklist data successfully revealed latitudinal migration progression in spring and autumn. Overall, non-checklist data proved to be well suited to determine descriptors of migration phenology in Northern Europe which are challenging to attain by any other currently available means. The effort-to-yield ratio of data processing was commensurate to the outcomes. The unprecedented spatiotemporal coverage makes non-checklist data a valuable complement to current migration databases from bird observatories. The basic concept of the present methodology is applicable to data from other bird portals, if combined with local field ornithological knowledge and literature. Species-specific descriptors of migration phenology can be potentially used in climate change studies and to support echo interpretation in radar ornithology.

Dataset Information

Benefits and challenges of incorporating citizen science into university education.

Publications

Benefits and challenges of incorporating citizen science into university education.

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