1. Jennifer Shirk and Rick Bonney Department of Program Development and Evaluation Cornell Lab of Ornithology Opportunities and Resources for Citizen Science at Science Centers
4. What is Citizen Science? Project or activity in which the public collects data to help understand large-scale research questions
5. Boundary of Northern Range 1990 2005 2000 1995 Project FeederWatch: Range shifts; engaging critical thinking (Bonter et al. unpublished data; Trumbull et al 2000)
6. Water Action Volunteer program: Social networks; environmental action (Overdevest et al. 2004) Flickr photo, sierraclub Flickr photo, 900hp
Our department at the Lab of O has been focusing on “opportunities and resources for citizen science” since 2007, working to compile best practices on the web site, citizenscience.org
Our scope has included, in recent years, an explicit focus on citizen science at science centers, as part of the Communicating Climate Change (C3) project. We will be hearing from a number of C3 partners today, and I will discuss some of the challenges we’ve encountered for climate change projects in particular, but I want to start by thinking about opportunities more generally for citizen science at science centers.
First, what is citizen science?... But what does this look like, and why might science centers be interested in any of these things? Can’t underestimate the importance of knowing the answer to the final question before getting started.
Here are some projects and the types of outcomes they have achieved. For example…
… and social outcomes, as well (use better example here).
In short, citizen science can do all this… if done well.
To accomplish these kinds of interdisciplinary outcomes, citizen science projects take a lot of work, especially if you’re starting from scratch. Thankfully, that’s often not necessary!
For example, as part of C3 (and you’ll hear more about this shortly) the Sciencenter in Ithaca wanted to explore the impacts of climate change on local species, and found that the NestWatch project offered guidance, support, and a dataset stretching back into the 1960’s. Several other sites are using national projects such as BudBurst, or the Monarch Larvae Monitoring Program, which offer curriculum materials. But, developing new projects is an option, and several of our partners are doing fantastic work to explore new systems like the redwoods, and the urban heat island effect.
This is not to say that C3 partners have had an easy go of it! They’re breaking new ground, both in bringing citizen science to science centers and in pioneering climate education through citizen science. And they’re helping us expand our list of online tools and resources, by encountering new challenges. One of these is the particular need, in trying to understand climate change through citizen science, for data analysis tools.
Importantly, there is evidence that the more deeply engaged people are in the process of science, the greater the learning outcomes. The parallel challenge, however, is educational support for making sense of data. Data have different meaning for observer and for researcher. Bridging the gap through visualization. THEREFORE need for visualization tools.
This is not to say that C3 partners have had an easy go of it! They’re breaking new ground, both in bringing citizen science to science centers and in pioneering climate education through citizen science. And they’re helping us expand our list of online tools and resources, by encountering new challenges. One of these is the particular need, in trying to understand climate change through citizen science, for data analysis tools.
Clearly there are new frontiers in citizen science that are being advanced by science centers. Because of this, I do not at all mean to suggest that science centers can’t or shouldn’t develop their own citizen science projects, and in fact there’s vast potential for that, as well. There are fields being discussed as citizen science that might be well served to turn to science and technology centers for resources and guidance, such as DIYBio projects like Open PCR. Distributed observers/researchers are often in need of hosts and support for local chapters. Briefly discuss community conversations???