| NSF Org: |
DRL Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 11, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 11, 2015 |
| Award Number: | 1516703 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Robert Russell
DRL Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | October 15, 2015 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2017 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $299,970.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $299,970.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
660 S MILL AVENUE STE 204 TEMPE AZ US 85281-3670 (480)965-5479 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
306 Delancey Street Philadelphia PA US 19106-4209 |
| 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): | AISL |
| 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): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
Arizona State University will develop new features for its SciStarter website that will expand participation in citizen science and provide rich data for researching the nature of and impacts of citizen science participation. SciStarter is a popular online citizen science hotspot featuring more than 850 searchable citizen science projects, added by researchers and project owners, and serving over 35,000 citizen scientists. The project will develop new features to add to the current website that will enable participants to explore hundreds of citizen science projects and select projects of most interest to them, track their participation, and connect to people and projects they are interested in. The expanded website will also provide rich data that will help citizen science projects evaluate their programs and that will rich data for researchers to investigate the nature of citizen science participation. The website will be widely accessible to the public through partnerships with Discover Magazine, the Citizen Science Association, and other partners.
The SciStarter website will develop additional features to expand citizen science participation and to research the nature and impacts of participation. The expanded features will include: (1) an integrated registration for participants to more easily engage in one or multiple citizen science projects, across platforms; (2) GIS implementation for project owners to define the geographic boundaries of projects so participants can find them more easily; and (3) an online, personal dashboard for participants to track their projects, participation, and contributions to science, share and save data, record interests in projects, create profiles, and find people and projects of interest to them. These new features will create opportunities for future research concerning: (1) understanding how citizen scientists use the site and how it responds to their needs and interests, and (2) understanding why, how, and with what impacts citizen scientists participate in research. The project will support the overall strategy of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning Program to enhance learning in informal environments through the funding of innovative resources through a variety of settings. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
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.
SciStarter 2.0 accomplished the following outcomes:
Improved Search Capabilities to increase the likelihood that individuals engage in citizen science projects by making it easier to discover and join science research projects and activities that match their interests, abilities, and locales.
Implemented Multiple Sign-on (Snippet). Increased the number of projects that people participate in by enabling them to easily sign-on to multiple projects, and to manage and track their participation in multiple projects from a simple dashboard. We pivoted early in this process when we discovered the technical lift for the project owners was too high. They would need to modify their existing sign in system. Instead, we created and made open an easy-to-use option for project owners to use a SciStarter volunteer sign up/management tool and/or use oAuth.
Enabled Contribution Tracking. Deepened participants' sense of commitment and ownership of their participation by tracking and recognizing their contributions to research projects, and enabling them to store and manage some of their contributions from their dashboard. We co-created, tested, iterated and deployed these pilot tools with 10 project partners.
Enhanced Project Owner Tools. Because participant motivation and satisfaction are also a function of how effectively project owners describe their projects, we also improved project owners’ ability to identify a project's subject areas and locales, and a new tool to search for and contact potential participants. We tested an alpha version of a Participant Finder which we will re-create and deploy in the future. It was outside the scope of work for this project.
Expanded Social Community. Increased opportunities to connect socially with fellow citizen scientists and professional researchers. New Profiles and Dashboards provide information about participants enabling projects owners and participants to learn about each other. In future work, we will develop social networking features to enable peer-to-peer links.
Evaluated Prototype System. Finally, to build capacity for future research into citizen science and informal science learning, another goal was to evaluate the prototype system to assess whether the new features could measure any changes in frequency and efficacy of citizen science and thereby lay the foundation for future research on how citizen science contributes to informal science learning. As a result, a separate, independent research grant was awarded to Dr. Caren Cooper at NCSU and NCState Museum of Natural Scientists to study this.
Last Modified: 01/17/2018
Modified by: Darlene F Cavalier
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