Developing activities around participatory science projects
An important component of developing course activities around
participatory science projects is linking the participatory activity
with course learning objectives. The content in Wild Davis lends itself
rather easily to participatory science projects, making these links
easier than they might be in other courses. Each week’s content is
structured around a single chapter of the California Naturalist Handbook
for which several participatory science projects could be relevant. For
example, one chapter of the Handbook broadly covers California’s animal
communities, including trophic interactions, functional groups,
introduced and invasive animals, as well as highlights of interesting or
iconic California wildlife in a variety of taxonomic groups.
Participatory science projects that could be integrated into this
content include (but are not limited to):
- iNaturalist: through either general wildlife observations or with
respect to specific projects tracking individual taxa or regions,
including invasive species.
- Taxon specific observation projects: eBird, Bumble Bee Watch, Bat
Detective (through SciStarter), etc.
- Season specific projects: Nature’s Notebook (through the National
Phenology Network), NestWatch, etc. Courses operating in the fall
could also take advantage of seasonal projects such as the Christmas
Day Bird Count (through the Audubon Society)
- Region specific projects: UCD Tricolor Blackbird Project, Western
Monarch Milkweed Mapper, etc
- Abiotic projects with a conceptual link to wildlife issues: GLOBE at
Night (light pollution), Debris Tracker (litter and garbage), Stream
Selfie (through SciStarter; water quality and flow patterns), etc.
Note that projects of this nature would require more framing and
perhaps additional ‘research’ outside of the participatory science
program in order to strengthen links to course content.
Weekly points were assigned for completing each activity, which required
the students to provide ‘evidence’ of their participation in the
project. In most cases, this took the form of uploading a screenshot of
their submission to the participatory science project and a short
description of how and where they collected their data to the course LMS
or Gradescope assignment.
In the majority of cases, the instructor contributed data or
observations to the project prior to the course session in which the
activity was introduced and could then share their data/observations as
an example. Interacting with the data submission portal prior to
assigning the activity was also important for troubleshooting problems
the students might encounter in completing the activity. For example,
GLOBE Cloud Observer requires submitted observations to be ‘reviewed’
before they are visible in the public data record. This extra step meant
that students needed to either 1) complete the activity at least a day
before the assignment deadline to ensure their observations were visible
to the instructor, or 2) take a screenshot of their observation prior to
submitting it to the portal, which they could share with the instructor
to document their activity.