| NSF Org: |
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | December 16, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | December 16, 2014 |
| Award Number: | 1520761 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Amy Baylor
abaylor@nsf.gov (703)292-5126 IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | November 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2016 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $215,654.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $215,654.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
343 WATER ST AUGUSTA ME US 04330-4665 (207)626-3230 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
ME US 04332-5359 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Cyberlearn & Future Learn Tech |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
The Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program funds efforts that will help envision the next generation of learning technologies and advance what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. One promising approach to support learning is the use of online learning communities. Another approach is place-based education, in which people learn about concepts through their application in the places people know: their homes, towns, and regions. This project examines an existing experimental online community called WeatherBlur, which uses both approaches as well as citizen science to connect kids, teachers, fishermen and -women, and scientists to learn about the local impacts of weather and climate in Alaska and Maine. The project will examine how this unique community connects people and will collect data on other learning communities to compare what features of the community allow people to collaborate and learn well across such diverse audiences. The research will yield a set of guiding principles for how to effectively structure online communities like WeatherBlur.
This project aims to contribute to theories of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) by exploring the theory of non-hierarchical learning communities. Data will be collected from the WeatherBlur community including social network data and a series of stakeholder interviews to document current practices within WeatherBlur; this data will be used inductively to help elaborate the theory. Stakeholder perceptions and theory building will be reciprocal and iterative through at least two iterations of member checks. Then, the project will conduct a cross-case comparative analysis of the WeatherBlur community and other citizen science online communities to help characterize the relationship between different types of communities for learning. The cross-case analysis will rely on self-report surveys and semi-structured interviews with both community architects and community participants. Furthermore, a community observation protocol will be constructed to operationalize the non-hierarchical learning community concept, and will be used to enrich the cross-case comparison.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Traditional citizen science projects have been based on the scientific community’s need to gather vast quantities of high quality data, neglecting to ask what the project participants get in return. How can participants be seen more as collaborative partners in citizen science projects? Online communities for citizen science are expanding rapidly, giving participants the opportunity to take part in a wide range of activities, from monitoring invasive species to identifying far-off galaxies. These communities can bring together the virtual and physical worlds in new ways that are egalitarian, collaborative, applied, localized and globalized to solve real environmental problems.
There are a small number of citizen science projects that leverage the affordances of an online community to connect, engage, and empower participants to make local change happen. The overall goal of this EAGER project is to explore how sociocultural learning theories related to computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) provide a theoretical framework for defining the emerging genre of non-hierarchal online learning communities. Non-hierarchical in this sense is defined as a collaborative learning forum in which, teachers and scientists are no longer perceived as the sole owners of knowledge; all users are generators of content as well as active learners, and the boundaries between teacher and student, scientist and citizen, young and old are blurred into one cohesive community of actively engaged science learners.
This study will identify and document the range and variation of design principles and resulting environmental actions found in these learning communities to potentially inform the future development of effective NHOLCs for use in citizen science projects.
Intellectual Merit: This study delved deeply into Sociocultural Learning Theory, drawing from Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), Place-based Education (Sobel, 2005), Funds of Knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), and Knowledge Building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). These sociocultural theories inform the development of the Non-Hierarchical Online Learning Community (NHOLC) conceptual framework. The new genre of NHOLC has five interwoven core concepts of the NHOLC framework that is applied to each case study:
1) Bring together diverse participant groups from widely differing areas of expertise to enable multi-directional learning opportunities in which everyone that joins the community has something they can offer and teach others within the community; 2) Enable participant-driven real-world investigations that are personally relevant to participants’ lives; 3) Share project purpose and goals; 4) Enable communication structures to build relationships and roles amongst a diversity of participants; and 5) Share place-based data across geographic boundaries.
After applying this framework to the case studies, four key design principles emerged that seem to foster collaboration online to address local environmental issues, which drive the programmatic and technological structures of the online learning communities involved in this study: 1) bringing together diverse groups from vast areas of expertise; 2) participant-driven real-world investigations that are relevant to participants’ lives; 3) access to tools and stories about past successes and failures; 4) bridging online activities with on-the-ground activities. In the section below, each design principle will be explored based on the experiences of community members and how they used the functions of the online communities.
Broader Impacts: The findings from this study provide solid design principles to be used by the field to develop of online citizen science communities. The results are especially helpful for researchers that intend to launch community-based co-created variants citizen science. The inclusion of a multiple-case study design of citizen science online learning communities that exhibit the characteristics and structures of non-hierarchal online learning communities provides the field with an overview of how this newly defined genre applies to citizen science, a very quickly evolving segment of the cyberlearning field. The audience of citizen scientists spans the globe and engages millions of participants of all ages in learning science in fun and relevant ways, therefore this study could potentially transform how citizens around the globe engage in science learning. The findings of this study provide insight into how to design, structure, build, and apply the theoretical framework for non-hierarchal online learning communities in general. The information and design principles that emerge from this study provide a well-defined point of departure for future research within the cyberlearning field.
Last Modified: 01/15/2017
Modified by: Ruth Kermish-Allen
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