Original title: A Framework for Articulating and Measuring Individual Learning Outcomes from Participation in Citizen Science
Citizen scienceScientific research that intentionally involves members of the public. involves the public in scientific research. Some projects also aim to help participants learn, but project teams have had little guidance on which kinds of learning to target or how to measure them. This study examines how learning outcomesThe knowledge or other learning a project intends participants to gain. from informal science educationScience learning that takes place outside formal schooling. have been used and measured in citizen science. It also presents a framework to help teams plan and evaluate those outcomes.
Imagine joining a community cooking class that hopes you will learn more than how to follow one recipe. It is hard to know what people actually learned if the class never says what skills it aims to teach or how it will check. In this paper, the class’s intended skills stand for participants’ learning outcomes, and the framework helps project teams describe and assess them.
People who join citizen science projects may learn as well as contribute to research. Clearer ways to describe and measure learning can help project teams design activities around what participants should gain and evaluate whether those aims are being met.
The abstract describes a framework and empirical data about how learning outcomes have been used and measured. It calls this a first step toward building evaluation capacity; it does not establish that the framework improves learning or that it applies equally well to every citizen science project.
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A Framework for Articulating and Measuring Individual Learning Outcomes from Participation in Citizen Science — Tina Phillips, Norman Porticella, Mark A. Constas et al. — Citizen Science Theory and Practice — doi:10.5334/cstp.126
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.