An official website of the United States government
In this paper, we describe the results of an online field experiment examining the impacts of messaging about task novelty on the volume of volunteers’ contributions to an online citizen science project. Encouraging volunteers to provide a little more content as they work is an attractive strategy to increase the community’s output. Prior research found that an important motivation for participation in online citizen science is the wonder of being the first person to observe a particular image. To appeal to this motivation, a pop-up message was added to an online citizen science project that alerted volunteers when they were the first to annotate a particular image. Our analysis reveals that new volunteers who saw these messages increased the volume of annotations they contributed. The results of our study suggest an additional strategy to increase the amount of work volunteers contribute to online communities and citizen science projects specifically.
more »
« less
Citizen Science as an Ecosystem of Engagement: Implications for Learning and Broadening Participation
Abstract The bulk of research on citizen science participants is project centric, based on an assumption that volunteers experience a single project. Contrary to this assumption, survey responses (n = 3894) and digital trace data (n = 3649) from volunteers, who collectively engaged in 1126 unique projects, revealed that multiproject participation was the norm. Only 23% of volunteers were singletons (who participated in only one project). The remaining multiproject participants were split evenly between discipline specialists (39%) and discipline spanners (38% joined projects with different disciplinary topics) and unevenly between mode specialists (52%) and mode spanners (25% participated in online and offline projects). Public engagement was narrow: The multiproject participants were eight times more likely to be White and five times more likely to hold advanced degrees than the general population. We propose a volunteer-centric framework that explores how the dynamic accumulation of experiences in a project ecosystem can support broad learning objectives and inclusive citizen science.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1713562
- PAR ID:
- 10348993
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- BioScience
- Volume:
- 72
- Issue:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 0006-3568
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 651 to 663
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Lepczyk, Christopher A. (Ed.)Online citizen science projects have broadened options for accessing science and enabled different forms of participation in scientific research for adult and young volunteers. Yet, little is known regarding participation patterns among youth participants. Quantitative approaches were used to investigate the contribution of 183 young volunteers to citizen science on the iNaturalist platform and the participation behaviour that relates to their contribution. The participants accessed and used iNaturalist as part of one-day field-based events (bioblitzes) facilitated by museums. Compared to the observation behaviour of all iNaturalist users, as documented on the platform, the young volunteers observe fewer plants and birds, and more molluscs, arachnids and insects. The average daily contributions of young volunteers were found to be positively associated with a large proportion of active days on iNaturalist and a systematic contribution behaviour, yet negatively related to a long duration on the platform. This study enhances our understanding of young volunteers’ contributions to citizen science and provides insights for research on participation in online citizen science. Our findings have implications on how museums design the field-based events to encourage follow-up systematic participation and maintain active contribution.more » « less
-
This paper explores the assumptions that citizen science (CS) project leaders had about their volunteers’ science inquiry skill–proficiency overall, and then examines volunteers’ actual proficiency in one specific skill, scientific observation, because it is fundamental to and shared by many projects. This work shares findings from interviews with 10 project leaders related to two common assumptions leaders have about their volunteers’ skill proficiency: one, that volunteers can perform the necessary skills to participate at the start of a CS project, and therefore may not need training; and two, volunteer skill proficiency improves over time through involvement in the CS project. In order to answer questions about the degree of accuracy to which volunteers can perform the necessary skills and about differences in their skill proficiency based on experience and data collection procedures, we analyzed data from seven CS projects that used two shared embedded assessment tools, each focused on skills within the context of scientific observation in natural settings: Notice relevant features for taxonomic identification and record standard observations. This across-project and cross-sectional study found that the majority of citizen science volunteers (n = 176) had the necessary skill proficiency to collect accurate scientific observations but proficiency varied based on volunteer experience and project data collection procedures.more » « less
-
We explore patterns of interaction with different learning resources (e.g., forums) to predict learning outcomes in an online citizen science project called Gravity Spy. To explore how volunteers engage with and benefit from these resources, we categorize them based on Sørensen's three forms of presence in learning environments: authority-subject, agent-centered, and communal presence. Methodologically, we apply sequence analysis to traces of volunteer interactions with the project to identify engagement patterns with these resources that predict learning. Our interpretation of these patterns is augmented by insights gleaned from interviews with volunteers about their work and use of learning resources. We find that early in the project, volunteers have only a simple task to learn, and completing that task is most predictive of their learning. At more advanced levels, when tasks become more complex, discussions with other volunteers become increasingly important, and interaction patterns become more varied. Viewing learning as a series of routines allows us to articulate precisely how and in what context learning occurs. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for designing citizen science projects that promote learning.more » « less
-
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.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac035
