Abstract
Since first being introduced in the mid 1990s, the term “citizen science”—the intentional engagement of the public in scientific research—has seen phenomenal growth as measured by the number of projects developed, people involved, and articles published. In addition to contributing to scientific knowledge, many citizen science projects attempt to achieve learning outcomes among their participants, however, little guidance is available for practitioners regarding the types of learning that can be supported through citizen science or the measuring of learning outcomes. This study provides empirical data to understand how intended learning outcomes first described by the informal science education field have been employed and measured within the citizen science field. We also present a framework for describing learning outcomes that should help citizen science practitioners, researchers, and evaluators in designing projects and in studying and evaluating their impacts. This is a first step in building evaluation capacity across the field of citizen science.
Highlights
Citizen science, defined here as public participation in scientific research, was originally conceived as a method for gathering large amounts of data across time and space (Bonney et al 2009b)
Our research used two sources of data—a structured review of citizen science project websites and an online survey of citizen science practitioners—to address the following three questions: 1) What are the learning outcomes that are intended or desired by citizen science practitioners, and to what extent do these outcomes align with those d escribed by the field of informal science education? (Data Source: Website Review)
2) What is the status of evaluation of citizen s cience learning outcomes across the field? (Data Source: Online practitioner survey)
Summary
Citizen science, defined here as public participation in scientific research, was originally conceived as a method for gathering large amounts of data across time and space (Bonney et al 2009b). Citizen science practitioners—those who conceive, develop, and implement citizen science projects—have sought to achieve science research outcomes and to elicit learning and behavioral outcomes for participants (Bonney et al 2016; Phillips et al 2014). While some projects have demonstrated achievement of a few learning outcomes (see Bonney et al 2016 for examples), most projects have yet to document robust outcomes such as increased interest in science or the environment, knowledge of science process, skills of science inquiry, or stewardship behaviors (Bela et al 2016; Bonney et al 2016; Jordan et al 2012; Phillips et al 2012). Citizen science suffers from a lack of quality project evaluations and cross-programmatic research (Phillips et al 2012)
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