ABSTRACT

The purpose of most citizen science projects is engaging citizens in providing data to scientists, not supporting citizen learning about science. Any citizen learning that does occur in most projects is normally a by-product of the project rather than a stated aim.This study examines learning outcomes of citizens participating in online citizen science communities purposely designed for inquiry learning. The ‘Citizen inquiry’ approach adopted in this study prioritises and scaffolds learning and engages people in all stages of the scientific process by involving them in inquiry-based learning while participating in citizen science activities. The exploratory research involved an intervention with two design studies of adult volunteer participants engaging in citizen-led inquiries, employing a mixed-methods approach. The findings indicated that, in both design studies, participants engaged in an inquiry process, and practised inquiry skills alongside other kinds of knowledge and skills not directly related to science. Differences between the outcomes of each study highlighted the importance of the design on learning impact. In particular, participant understanding of research processes and methods, and developing more experimental studies were more evident with the support of a dynamic representation of the inquiry process. Furthermore, in the second study, which was hosted in a more engaging and interactive learning environment, participants perceived science as fun, were involved in inquiry discussions, and showed progress in scientific vocabulary. The paper concludes with some considerations for science educators and citizen science facilitators to enhance the learning outcomes of citizen inquiry and similar online communities for science inquiries.

摘要

大多数公民科学项目的目的是让公民参与向科学家提供数据，而不是支持公民学习科学。大多数项目中发生的任何公民学习通常都是该项目的副产品，而不是既定目标。本研究调查了专门为探究性学习而设计的在线公民科学社区的公民学习成果。本研究中采用的“公民探究”方法优先考虑和支持学习，并通过在参与公民科学活动的同时让人们参与基于探究的学习来使人们参与科学过程的各个阶段。这项探索性研究涉及一项干预，即采用混合方法对参与公民主导的询问的成年志愿者参与者进行两项设计研究。调查结果表明，在这两项设计研究中，参与者都参与了探究过程，并练习了探究技能以及其他与科学不直接相关的知识和技能。每个研究结果之间的差异突出了设计对学习影响的重要性。尤其是，在查询过程的动态表示的支持下，参与者对研究过程和方法的理解以及开展更多的实验研究变得更加明显。此外，在第二个研究中，该研究在一个更具吸引力和互动性的学习环境中进行，参与者认为科学很有趣，参与了探究性讨论，并展示了科学词汇的进步。