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1. CitSci.org & PPSR Core: Sharing biodiversity observations across platforms

   https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.5.75666  

   Budnicki, Brandon ; Newman, Gregory ( September 2021 , Biodiversity Information Science and Standards)

   CitSci.org is a global citizen science software platform and support organization housed at Colorado State University. The mission of CitSci is to help people do high quality citizen science by amplifying impacts and outcomes. This platform hosts over one thousand projects and a diverse volunteer base that has amassed over one million observations of the natural world, focused on biodiversity and ecosystem sustainability. It is a custom platform built using open source components including: PostgreSQL, Symfony, Vue.js, with React Native for the mobile apps. CitSci sets itself apart from other Citizen Science platforms through the flexibility in the types of projects it supports rather than having a singular focus. This flexibility allows projects to define their own datasheets and methodologies. The diversity of programs we host motivated us to take a founding role in the design of the PPSR Core, a set of global, transdisciplinary data and metadata standards for use in Public Participation in Scientific Research (Citizen Science) projects. Through an international partnership between the Citizen Science Association, European Citizen Science Association, and Australian Citizen Science Association, the PPSR team and associated standards enable interoperability of citizen science projects, datasets, and observations. Here we share our experience over the past 10+ years of supporting biodiversity research both as developers of the CitSci.org platform and as stewards of, and contributors to, the PPSR Core standard. Specifically, we share details about: the origin, development, and informatics infrastructure for CitSci our support for biodiversity projects such as population and community surveys our experiences in platform interoperability through PPSR Core working with the Zooniverse, SciStarter, and CyberTracker data quality data sharing goals and use cases. the origin, development, and informatics infrastructure for CitSci our support for biodiversity projects such as population and community surveys our experiences in platform interoperability through PPSR Core working with the Zooniverse, SciStarter, and CyberTracker data quality data sharing goals and use cases. We conclude by sharing overall successes, limitations, and recommendations as they pertain to trust and rigor in citizen science data sharing and interoperability. As the scientific community moves forward, we show that Citizen Science is a key tool to enabling a systems-based approach to ecosystem problems. 

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2. Students’ Feedback About Their Experiences in EPICS Using Natural Language Processing

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962557  

   Anakok, I. ; Woods, J. ; Huerta, M. ; Schoepf, J. ; Murzi, H. ; Katz, A. ( October 2022 , IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference)

   This research full paper presents research around the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program that serves two key purposes to: 1) provide a structured approach for engineering students to engage in real-world, service-based projects and 2) provide technical support and expertise that may be critical to local and global community organizations. Hence, EPICS strives to offer a platform that fosters the collaboration of engineering students and communities. EPICS helps develop undergraduate students’ professional skills extending beyond the theoretical knowledge acquired in classrooms. EPICS has been a fixture in engineering education for over 15 years, with a strong focus on curricular and pedagogical interventions to help students gain professional skills. The purpose of this paper is to explore the perspectives of over 650 students who participated in EPICS at a U.S. university during the academic years of 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. We used natural language processing (NLP) to thematically analyze students’ responses to an open-ended survey administered at the end of their semester participating in the EPICS program. Students’ responses reflect their perspectives on the design process, teamwork, real-world experiences, and the challenges they face during the design process related to other people and the program. In our findings, students’ least favorite parts of EPICS were lectures and design reviews, while their favorite parts of EPICS were teamwork and engaging with community partners. Understanding the themes emerging from the data can help us better implement community-based educational initiatives and find ways to better engage students in community service-learning projects. Our research provides implications for practice and research. 

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3. RPPs: Love 'Em or Leave 'Em

   Bevan, Bronwyn ; Henrick, Erin ; McGee, Steven ; Dettori, Lucia ( April 2019 , ISEE Xplore)

   For the last three years the CS for All initiative at the National Science Foundation has had a call for research-practice partnership (RPP) projects. The goal of the program is to advance both knowledge and practice in creating inclusive, responsive computer science/computational thinking programs for all K-12 youth. RPPs represent an approach to research that, by design, is both more equitable and more ethical because it leverages community stakeholder experiences and perspectives to inform research questions, methods, and meaning-making. RPPs are thus potentially powerful tools for equity-oriented initiatives such as CS for All. Beginning in December 2016, the Research + Practice Collaboratory, an NSF-funded initiative based at the University of Washington, has led ten RPP development workshops for CS for All, collectively serving over 700 members of the community. At these workshops we have collected data about how the community sees itself benefiting from the adoption of RPP approaches to the work. In this experience paper we describe what we have learned about the field’s interests with respect to adopting RPP approaches to the work. 

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4. LanguageARC: Developing Language Resources Through Citizen Linguistics

   Fiumara, James ; Cieri, Christopher ; Wright, Jonathan ; Liberman, Mark ( May 2020 , Proceedings of the LREC 2020 Workshop Citizen Linguistics in Language Resource Development (CLLRD 2020))

   This paper introduces the citizen science platform, LanguageARC, developed within the NIEUW (Novel Incentives and Workflows) project supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1730377. LanguageARC is a community- oriented online platform bringing together researchers and “citizen linguists” with the shared goal of contributing to linguistic research and language technology development. Like other Citizen Science platforms and projects, LanguageARC harnesses the power and efforts of volunteers who are motivated by the incentives of contributing to science, learning and discovery, and belonging to a community dedicated to social improvement. Citizen linguists contribute language data and judgments by participating in research tasks such as classifying regional accents from audio clips, recording audio of picture descriptions and answering personality questionnaires to create baseline data for NLP research into autism and neurodegenerative conditions. Researchers can create projects on Language ARC without any coding or HTML required using our Project Builder Toolkit. 

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5. How Do Young Community and Citizen Science Volunteers Support Scientific Research on Biodiversity? The Case of iNaturalist

   https://doi.org/10.3390/d13070318  

   Aristeidou, Maria ; Herodotou, Christothea ; Ballard, Heidi L. ; Higgins, Lila ; Johnson, Rebecca F. ; Miller, Annie E. ; Young, Alison N. ; Robinson, Lucy D. ( July 2021 , Diversity)

   Online community and citizen science (CCS) projects have broadened access to scientific research and enabled different forms of participation in biodiversity research; however, little is known about whether and how such opportunities are taken up by young people (aged 5–19). Furthermore, when they do participate, there is little research on whether their online activity makes a tangible contribution to scientific research. We addressed these knowledge gaps using quantitative analytical approaches and visualisations to investigate 249 youths’ contributions to CCS on the iNaturalist platform, and the potential for the scientific use of their contributions. We found that nearly all the young volunteers’ observations were ‘verifiable’ (included a photo, location, and date/time) and therefore potentially useful to biodiversity research. Furthermore, more than half were designated as ‘Research Grade’, with a community agreed-upon identification, making them more valuable and accessible to biodiversity science researchers. Our findings show that young volunteers with lasting participation on the platform and those aged 16–19 years are more likely to have a higher proportion of Research Grade observations than younger, or more ephemeral participants. This study enhances our understanding of young volunteers’ contributions to biodiversity research, as well as the important role professional scientists and data users can play in helping verify youths’ contributions to make them more accessible for biodiversity research. 

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