On the 9th of April there was a citizen science symposium
held at Te Papa Wellington. You may have heard the term but do you know what
citizen science is all about?
Firstly the objective should have a meaningful scientific
outcome. The ideal would be to have a paper published on the outcome so that
the information collected could be shared.
The ideal citizen science project would have three
participants;
An enabler. This person is usually attached to an
organisation such as a city council or a government department such the
department of conservation. They would coordinate the project and solicit
funding.
The scientist. They would either develop, or review, the
methodology to be used to ensure meaningful objectives were going to be met.
Hopefully they would also write up and present a paper at its conclusion.
The community (group / volunteers). They would be the ones
on the ground doing the collecting of data.
When designing the methodology there are two things to keep
in mind.
The more people involved in collecting the data (the
community group / volunteers) the simpler the methodology should be and it
should require only minimal training.
If the collection of data is, by necessity complex, then it
should only involve a very limited number of people who can be selected for
suitability and training.
This link is to a YouTube clip of Siobhan Leachman’s
presentation at the symposium entitled “Developing a crowdsourcing project –
Keeping volunteers on board (7:40). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNc35-U1TzA
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