Abstract
iNaturalist is a large and growing open-source online platform connecting a global community of users to the natural world and to each other. iNaturalist makes it simple for anyone to share observations, get identifications, and make identifications of any species. We demonstrate how iNaturalist can connect students to nature in undergraduate courses, simultaneously contributing to biodiversity knowledge. Our three case studies use iNaturalist to improve student bioliteracy (awareness and knowledge of biodiversity), to engage them in biodiscovery (discovering undocumented biodiversity occurrences, behaviors, and interactions), to introduce students to systematic ecological sampling (documenting biodiversity patterns and trends), and to improve their data literacy (by depositing and accessing open biodiversity data and by performing analyses). Included are examples from a variety of contexts—a required general science course, introductory courses for science majors, and more specialized electives. We discuss the rationale for iNaturalist inclusion, how iNaturalist inspires students and complements courses, and outputs of our students’ iNaturalist use. Introducing students to tools such as iNaturalist helps build the next generation of bioliterate and biocurious citizens and scientists, fluent in open collaborative research and learning. With wider uptake and coordination, iNaturalist has potential to connect undergraduate ecology courses to form a distributed virtual global biodiversity observatory.
Highlights
The biodiversity crisis looms large (IPBES 2019), with numerous and varied causes behind species declines and extinctions (Rosenberg et al 2019; Wagner et al 2021)
Faculty, teaching assistants, and experts directly assisting with courses, 3,070 iNaturalist users made identifications on students’ observations, and 149 iNaturalist users made comments
22% were exactly correct at the species level, 24% were higher taxa of the correct species, and 36% of students’ first identifications were wrong and were later corrected by other iNaturalist users, often with comments
Summary
The biodiversity crisis looms large (IPBES 2019), with numerous and varied causes behind species declines and extinctions (Rosenberg et al 2019; Wagner et al 2021). In addition to conserving and preserving the wild (and not so wild) spaces where species exist, the moment is for widespread participatory action. We need to act, using available technology and tools. In most places, we do not know what is increasing or declining (Dirzo et al 2014), and there are many impediments to understanding the changes happening in the natural world. Educators have a unique responsibility, and opportunity, to engage with students to advance knowledge of species and to collectively discover, monitor, and celebrate biodiversity. We need more biodiversity data, and we need it to be open and use international data standards (Morrison et al 2017)
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