Engaging Non-Science Majors in Authentic Research through Citizen Science

国家的福利取决于人们理解科学信息和理解数据的能力。科学入门课程通常是非理科专业的本科生最后一门正式的科学课程。在许多这些科学入门课程中，学生对科学家的工作和科学如何运作几乎没有什么了解。因此，重要的是入门课程，为学生提供机会，以更好地了解科学是如何工作的，并获得使用和分析数据的技能。在这个项目中，将编制和测试天文学、生物学和地球科学入门课程，让学生参与公民科学研究项目。学生将积极参与在线公民科学平台Zooniverse，并进行自己设计的小组研究项目。Zooniverse平台允许科学家与业余志愿者一起进行真实的研究。它包含80多个关于各种主题的活跃的公民科学项目，并通过用户友好的数据分析工具提供优质的数据。该项目旨在为学生创造机会，开展工作，以支持科学发现，并达到循证结论。通过这些经验，学生将提高他们的科学知识和科学思维能力。本项目旨在开发，实施和评估公民科学研究经验，在介绍科学课程的非科学专业。将为五种不同类型的机构编制天文学、生物学和地球科学入门课程的教材。拟议的材料将使学生参与课堂活动和小组研究项目。这些活动将使用Zooniverse在线平台，让学生对数据进行分类，评估数据可靠性，并使用科学方法在现实世界中探索数据。在这个项目中开发的材料将被告知与基于课程的本科生研究经验相关的循证实践。这项工作将以项目小组先前的工作为基础，将基于Zooniverse的研究经验纳入天文学入门课程。该团队将评估跨学科内容，机构背景和课程结构的研究经验的易用性和实施。对学生的学习和态度增益的影响将使用前/后调查，编码作业，与学生的访谈，并在Zooniverse平台嵌入式评估进行评估。将评估的结果包括科学自我效能的变化，科学身份，提出主张和证据推理的能力，以及终身科学参与的潜力。项目结果将被广泛传播，所有材料将通过classroom.zooniverse.org公开提供。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

The nation's welfare depends on the ability of people to understand scientific information and make sense of data. Introductory science courses are often the last formal science course taken by undergraduate students who are not majoring in science. In many of these introductory science courses, students gain little insight into what scientists do and how science works. It is therefore important for introductory courses to provide opportunities for students to better understand how science works, and to gain skills using and analyzing data. In this project, curricula will be developed and tested for introductory astronomy, biology, and geoscience courses to involve students in citizen science research projects. Students will actively participate in the online citizen science platform, Zooniverse, and conduct group research projects of their own design. The Zooniverse platform allows scientists to work with amateur volunteers on authentic research. It contains over 80 active citizen science projects on a variety of topics and provides quality curated data with user-friendly data analysis tools. This project aims to create opportunities for students to carry out work to support scientific discovery and reach evidence-based conclusions. Through these experiences, it is expected that students will improve their scientific knowledge and scientific thinking skills.This project aims to develop, implement, and assess citizen science research experiences in introductory science courses for non-science majors. Curricular materials will be developed for introductory astronomy, biology, and geoscience courses at five different types of institutions. The proposed materials will engage students with in-class activities and group research projects. These activities will use the Zooniverse online platform to engage students in classifying data, assessing data reliability, and using scientific approaches to explore the data in a real-world context. Materials developed in this project will be informed by evidence-based practices associated with course based undergraduate research experiences. The effort will build on the project teams' prior work to integrate Zooniverse-based research experiences in introductory astronomy courses. The team will assess ease of use and implementation of the research experiences across the disciplinary content, institutional contexts, and course structures. The impact on students' learning and attitudinal gains will be assessed using pre/post surveys, coded assignments, interviews with students, and embedded assessments within the Zooniverse platform. The outcomes that will be assessed include changes in science self-efficacy, science identity, ability to make claims and reason with evidence, and potential for lifelong science engagement. Project results will be widely disseminated, and all materials will be publicly available via classroom.zooniverse.org.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.