Group Admins
Description
Session Description
Open science is part of the open ecosystem. In both the education sphere the public engagement sphere benefits have been proposed for enabling open participation in science investigations on personally meaningful issues or relating to community interests. There is an urgent need to explore the practices adopted by participants in such citizen science projects, and in particular the influence on learning for the participants, especially in those projects which rely on technology to support collaboration. At the Open University (OU) as part of the openTEL priority research area initiative a team has helped to create the current state-of-the art in citizen science inquiry. Citizen science inquiry is a combination of mass participation citizen science and learning to be a scientist through scientific inquiry (Herodotou et al., 2017). Over a ten year period an exploration of inquiry learning in science has been conducted including the development of software to support it, first for formal education (e.g. nQuire) and latterly for citizen science (nQuire-it). The time is right for considering this activity in the context of other similar initiatives globally as the growth of citizen science projects is occurring at the same time as a growth of interest in informal learning, both supported by technology enhanced learning. Involving the public in different types of collaboration with scientists has consequences for data collection, data analysis and the way in which science is conducted. Recently a web platform for these large-scale public experiments has been developed, in conjunction with the BBC Tomorrows World strand. This platform is a development of the nQuire-it platform to allow for scientists, and members of the public to create and run online studies which can be (but do not have to be) at large scale. This presentation would focus on whether, what, and how, citizen scientists learn science concepts and/or about science practices when engaged in such activities and how the concept of open science is enacted in these settings. It would draw on a number of existing studies of citizen science work conducted such as Aristeidou et al. ( 2017), and Boakes et al. (2016) and report on ongoing studies in 2018.
References
Aristeidou, .
, Scanlon, E. and Sharples, M. (2017). Profiles of engagement in online communities of citizen science participation. Computers in Human Behavior, 74, 246–256
Boakes, E., Gliozzo, G. Seymour, V., Harvey, M., Smith, C. and Haklay, M. (2016). Patterns of contribution to citizen science biodiversity projects increase understanding of volunteers recording, Scientific Reports 6, 33051
Herodotou, C., Sharples, M. and Scanlon, E. (2017). Citizen Science Inquiry, Routledge Press:London
References
References
Aristeidou, M., Scanlon, E. and Sharples, M. (2017). Profiles of engagement in online communities of citizen science participation. Computers in Human Behavior, 74, 246–256
Boakes, E., Gliozzo, G. Seymour, V., Harvey, M., Smith, C. and Haklay, M. (2016). Patterns of contribution to citizen science biodiversity projects increase understanding of volunteers recording, Scientific Reports 6, 33051
Herodotou, C., Sharples, M. and Scanlon, E. (2017). Citizen Science Inquiry, Routledge Press:London
Resources
BBC Tomorrows World nQuire, Available at http://iet.open.ac.uk/projects/tomorrows-world-nquire
Last accessed 30 November 2018
iSpot, Available at http://www.ispotnature.org/
Last accessed 30 November 2018
nQuire, Available at http://www.nquire.org.uk
Last accessed 1 February 2019
The nQuire project, Available at http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/open-science/projects/nquire-supporting-inquiry-based-learning
Last accessed 30 November 2018
