Citizen science is increasingly popular across a wide spectrum of organizations, including community groups, schools, and informal educational settings. Citizen science includes the public in the use of scientific practices to investigate phenomena. Involvement in citizen science projects has been shown to improve understanding of the scientific method and belief that one can do science, as well as demonstrate the relevance of science to peoples' homes, communities, and lives. Thus, it provides a valuable opportunity to bring authentic scientific discovery into undergraduate classrooms to produce students who are job ready in the 21st century. A lack of coordination among citizen science developers, scientists, and instructors, however, is impeding progress in the use of citizen science in higher education classrooms to a high capacity. This project will create a network of individuals involved in the development, implementation, and data end-users of citizen science projects to determine the best practices associated with using citizen science projects in higher education. The increased dialogue created through this network will improve not only undergraduate biology education, but also the generation of scientific data. The project has far reaching impacts from diversity and inclusion, professional development, higher education pedagogy, curriculum development, and even citizen science project creation/management.
This RCN-Incubator will increase collaboration among diverse individuals involved with the development and use of citizen science, compile prior research showing the learning benefits of citizen science in higher education, examine known examples of how citizen science has been used in courses, and compile a list of tools needed to ease implementation of citizen science in higher education. These objectives will be met through two in-person meetings and four virtual meetings, as well as the regular use of digital communication. Final databases and syntheses will be made publicly available on websites and through a final peer-reviewed publication. The results of this Incubator grant will provide a launching point for a full RCN proposal to produce the tools necessary to ease implementation and better understand the contextual subtleties associated with the use of diverse citizen science projects in diverse courses and institution types. Having a formalized network of ambassadors for the use of citizen science in higher education should increase the number of undergraduates participating in citizen science, resulting in increased self-efficacy, content knowledge, and development of a scientific mindset. These gains will facilitate the persistence of students in STEM fields and perhaps even increased engagement of their communities in the generation of novel scientific findings.
This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/)
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
