Webinar Series: Citizen Science Hour for Biodiversity Collections
Registration
This webinar is currently on hiatus, but please check out the many recorded talks on Vimeo.
Motivation
This webinar series is dedicated to catalyzing excellence in citizen science that engages biodiversity collections. Citizen science is public engagement in scientific research, and it has the valuable potential to simultaneously advance research, science literacy and participation, and project sustainability, among other goals. Biodiversity collections curate about 3 billion specimens (insects on pins, fossils in drawers, fish in jars, plants on sheets, etc.) worldwide, and these are critically important to research that puts present day diversity and distribution in context and models the future of Earth's biome. These collections range widely in their institutional settings, including museums, botanical gardens, universities, field stations, government research centers, and other places.
While iDigBio's mission focuses on specimen digitization, data sharing, and data use, this series is intended to encompass all opportunities that citizen science might offer to the collections community and complementary sectors of that community's institutions. The series is targeted at an audience of collections curators, researchers, educators, and affiliates.
The need for something like this webinar series was recognized during the 2020 Biodiversity Summit that iDigBio hosted for the leadership of projects funded by NSF’s Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program. A follow-up survey of the community led to a winnowing of 22 potential topics down to a set of high-priority topics that we are aiming to schedule into two parts: the first, more general cluster between January and May; the second, tool-focused cluster between May and August.
Schedule
The webinar is scheduled for the second and fourth Thursday of each month from 2–3 pm ET, starting January 28, 2021. Titles, speakers, links to additional resources, and recordings will be aggregated below.
January 28, 2021: Opportunities Provided by the 2021 Global Citizen Science Month, including City Nature Challenge and WeDigBio
Speakers
Libby Ellwood — Global Communications Manager, iDigBio, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida
Lila Higgins — Senior Manager, Community Science, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Caroline Nickerson — Program Manager, SciStarter
Alison Young — Co-Director, Citizen Science, California Academy of Sciences
Additional Resources
Recording
February 11, 2021: Participant Introductions!
Speaker
Registered participants will receive via email a Zoom link that differs from the main webinar Zoom link for this series for the February 11 activities (and only the February 11 activities). That alternative Zoom link will enable greater discussion amongst participants. Come prepared to meet others in our community, do a 1-minute introduction of yourself and a relevant activity in which you are engaged, and have fun!
Additional Resources
To be added.
February 25, 2021: The Future of Citizen Science
Speaker
Jennifer Shirk — Executive Director, Citizen Science Association
Brief Summary
The history of this young field is characterized by thinking differently about who can do science. I’ll muse on how our history can provoke our future if we imagine how we all might do science differently together.
Additional Resources
Data Quality Resource Compendium for Citizen and Community Science
NASEM's Learning through Citizen Science: Enhancing Opportunities by Design
Data Standard for Public Participation in Scientific Research
Scientist-Community Partnerships: A Scientist's Guide to Successful Collaboration
NOAA Citizen Science Strategy: Applying the Power of the Crowd
Recording
March 11, 2021: Ethical Considerations in Citizen Science
Speaker
Lisa Rasmussen — Professor and Graduate School Faculty Fellow, Philosophy Department, University of North Carolina—Charlotte
Brief Summary
In this presentation, I'll give a broad overview of several kinds of ethical issues arising in citizen science research, situating them with respect to contemporary US research regulations. I'll focus in particular on the kinds of ethical issues that might arise in digital and biodiversity citizen science, including issues such as data and publication ethics. We will also briefly consider what the field of citizen science is doing about ethical issues, and how it might go about doing more.
Additional Resources
Rasmussen, L. M. and C. Cooper (eds). 2019. Ethical Issues in Citizen Science. Special issue of Citizen Science: Theory and Practice. Link
Rasmussen, L. M. 2021. Research Ethics in Citizen Science. In A. S. Iltis and D. MacKay (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Research Ethics. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190947750.013.36 Link
Rasmussen, L. M. 2019. Confronting research misconduct in Citizen Science. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice. 4(1), p.10. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.207 Link
Recording
March 25, 2021: Understanding Trust in Citizen Science
Speaker
Anne Bowser — Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Innovation Program and Director of Innovation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Brief Summary
Evidence consistently demonstrates that citizen science projects produce information that is fit for purpose. But in high-level discussions of citizen science, data quality is an often-cited concern. I'll start my talk by analyzing this disconnect, share my experience overcoming trust barriers in the context of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reporting, and address options for citizen science projects to communicate data quality and ultimately trust.
Additional Resources
moroni, david f.; Ramapriyan, Hampapuram; Peng, Ge; Hobbs, Jonathan; Goldstein, Justin; Downs, Robert; et al. (2019): Understanding the Various Perspectives of Earth Science Observational Data Uncertainty. ESIP. Report. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.10271450.v1
Bowser, A., Cooper, C., de Sherbinin, A., Wiggins, A., Brenton, P., Chuang, T.-R., Faustman, E., Haklay, M. (Muki) . and Meloche, M., 2020. Still in Need of Norms: The State of the Data in Citizen Science. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 5(1), p.18. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.303
Recording
April 8, 2021: Evaluating Citizen Science Projects
Speaker
Tina Phillips — Assistant Director, Center for Engagement in Science and Nature, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University
Brief Summary
Evaluation of progress and achievement of outcomes in citizens science projects is critically important to ensure their continued success. In this talk, I’ll describe some fundamental concepts for evaluating citizen science as well as introduce new directions for implementing evaluation across the field.
Additional Resources
CSA Research and Evaluation Working Group Link
Phillips, T., Porticella, N., Constas, M., & Bonney, R. (2018). A Framework for Articulating and Measuring Individual Learning Outcomes from Participation in Citizen Science. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 3(2), 3. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.126
User’s Guide for Evaluating Learning Outcomes PDF
Survey Instruments to Measure Learning Outcomes link
Recording
April 22, 2021: Citizen Science in Higher Education
Speaker
Colleen Hitchcock — Associate Professor, Biology Department and Environmental Studies Program, Brandeis University
Brief Summary
Opportunities to connect students with research opportunities through citizen science are on the rise. In this talk, I'll introduce some of the different ways to engage students in research from single assignments to a course companion approach.
Recording
May 13, 2021: Biodiversity Data Standards for Citizen Science
Speaker
Peter Brenton, Manager, Applications, Atlas of Living Australia, National Collections and Marine Infrastructure, CSIRO
Brief Summary
Citizen science is a major contributor of biodiversity data - more than one third of all [500 million +] biodiversity observation data points which are accessible via GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and almost half of those accessible via the ALA (Atlas of Living Australia). These data are aggregated from hundreds of datasets, providing insights into patterns and distributions of organisms which are impossible to obtain from separate datasets on their own.
The process of aggregating data must be anchored around concepts which are understood and common to all datasets. Data standards define these concepts in a stable, documented terminology and language which allows disparate datasets, often collected for different purposes, to be joined together for more comprehensive and effective understanding of our natural world. Standards also allow for information to be efficiently exchanged between different parties and easily integrated by the receiver.
In this presentation I will introduce the key data standards applicable in the biodiversity and citizen science domains, exploring their commonality and differences, as well as how they can be used effectively in new citizen science projects and/or infrastructure initiatives. Using several Australian case studies I will demonstrate how the ALA is helping to improve the application of these standards in the citizen science/biodiversity sector and the impact that this is having in biodiversity science and real-world natural resource management.
We also take a brief look at emerging standards around eDNA and sensor-based data capture, as well as event and complex survey data which will provide context to record level data points and significantly enhance understanding and meaning gained from analysis of data.
Additional Resources
Recording
May 27, 2021: How to Leverage SciStarter as a Conduit to Broad and Niche Communities
Speaker
Darlene Cavalier — Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University
Additional Resources
Recording
June 10, 2021: Next Steps for the Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections (WeDigBio) Event
Speaker
Libby Ellwood — Global Communications Director, iDigBio, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida
Additional Resources
Recording
June 24, 2021: People-Powered Archives: Digitizing Biodiversity Collections with the Zooniverse
Speaker
Samantha Blickhan — Humanities Lead, Zooniverse, The Adler Planetarium
Additional Resources
Recording
July 8, 2021: Provision, Advertise, and Lead Biodiversity Specimen Digitization Expeditions with BIOSPEX
Speaker
Austin Mast — Professor, Department of Biological Science, Florida State University
Additional Resources
Recording
July 22, 2021: Celebrating 10 years of crowdsourced digitisation with DigiVol
Speaker
Paul Flemons — Manager, Digital Collections and Citizen Science, Australian Museum
Additional Resources
Recording
August 12, 2021: Extending Biodiversity Collections using iNaturalist
Speaker
Carrie Seltzer — Stakeholder Engagement Strategist, iNaturalist, California Academy of Sciences
Additional Resources
Recording
August 26, 2021: Citizen Science Platforms and their Value for Biodiversity Collection Curators, Researchers, Educators, and Affiliates
Speaker
Greg Newman — Research Scientist, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University
Additional Resources
Recording
Watch this space for additional titles and speakers!
Organizers
The webinar series is organized by Austin Mast (Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium, Florida State University) and Libby Ellwood (Florida Museum of Natural History and Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County).