Search for: All records

In professional development (PD), who the learners are becomes a central feature that influences not only their learning, but also that of those around them. Participant identities, expectations, and teaching philosophies all influence the success of PD. In 2019, Zagallo and colleagues developed a set of personas to characterize how instructors show up in these settings. We are expanding on this prior study to include instructors from diverse institution types participating in a different PD context. To validate the existing personas and generate potential new personas, we followed Zagallo's stepwise procedure that included the collection of multiple types of data (interview transcripts, PD observations, meeting observations) over a 2-y period, qualitative analysis and triangulation of data, creation of skeletons that could be further developed into personas, description and refinement of skeletons into personas, and validation of the personas. Themes from the original study were also captured in this study: knowledge of students, teaching values, approaches to innovations, and perceived barriers. Four personas from the original paper were refined, and two new personas (Riley the Rookie and Ash the Advocate) were identified; both arose from institutional contexts not present in the prior research. 

Climate change and biodiversity loss require us to engage the next generation of scientists in addressing global ecological issues. Introducing undergraduate students to citizen science allows them to learn scientific processes and content while contributing to real‐world applications. We conducted a systematic review of literature to (1) identify what types of undergraduate courses and institutions use citizen science, (2) list the projects and platforms that have been implemented in online courses in undergraduate education, (3) examine how students participated in the projects through online courses, and (4) summarize learning objectives and reported benefits of student participation. In all, 44 studies about the use of citizen science in undergraduate online courses were found in 25 papers in the published literature. The most common projects consisted of classification of species or natural history (e.g., iNaturalist), which could be done mainly online but with data collection completed at a location available to the student. Citizen science projects were incorporated into multiple course formats (e.g., lecture, lab) and class sizes, and students were most frequently asked to collect and submit data. The most frequently reported learning outcomes included increased student interest/engagement, improved appreciation for the relevance of science to the “real world,” and practice using the scientific process, but rigorous assessment data were lacking in papers. The use of citizen science in online courses and institutions appears to be increasing, and we encourage faculty using these approaches with students to publish on their efforts, providing details about their implementation, assessment, and course context.