Designing Citizen Science for Both Science and Education

In January 2017, eleven field science advocates gathered in an unlikely location: indoors. These individuals were educators, scientists, and web platform developers participating in theDesigning Citizen Science for Both Science and Education workshop, hosted by the BSCS Science Learning (BSCS) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The workshop focused on georeferenced field studies, which are projects that involve the collection of data organized by location. Led by Dr. Daniel Edelson, Executive Director of BSCS, participants discussed the relationship between data collection and education in citizen science. “There is conventional wisdom that the two goals are in tension with each other,” Edelson explained. Some project organizers believe that in order to collect quality data, their tasks must be too rigid to allow for exploratory learning. Additionally, they may believe that, in order to provide a dynamic education to participants, projects must sacrifice some data quality. With this workshop, Edelson and his colleagues set out to debunk the myth that these two goals contradict each other.