SBIR Phase I: Engaging citizens in environmental research to impact science literacy and STEM careers while ensuring data integrity

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力旨在让公民参与环境研究活动，有可能增加年轻人对科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）职业的选择。该项目的重点是加强围绕公民科学的学术和行业合作伙伴关系，提高科学和环境素养，增加代表性不足群体在STEM研究领域的参与。除了改善国家的科学和技术劳动力管道外，该项目还寻求采用一种独特的商业化模式，用于互动式教育媒体，既可以进行真实的学习，又可以被普通受众广泛使用。这种模式混合了数字和亲身体验、数字分销方法和移动体验商业化策略，可以作为其他教育和商业互动媒体公司的典范。这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目解决了两个关键问题：让更多的年轻人参与环境科学和工程教育，以及为科学家增加当地的环境数据。项目团队将研究和开发最佳方法和工具，以创建具有快速科学数据收集能力的教育和互动媒体。对于青年和教育工作者，该项目寻求让用户参与符合国家标准的科学学习活动。该项目将建立超本地网络，收集数据并将结果直接提供给当地社区，以便他们能够积极跟踪紧迫的环境问题，如迁徙和物种数量的变化。该项目的技术目标包括创建新的流程，以一种自动分类和验证数据的方式，将本地众包用户输入连接到公民科学数据存储库。由此产生的项目将积极吸引年轻人参与真正的科学研究，并改善联邦和大学环境科学项目的数据收集。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to engage citizen in environmental research activities, potentially increasing the selection of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers for youth. This project focuses on enhancing academic and industry partnerships around citizen science, improving science and environmental literacy, and increasing participation of underrepresented groups in STEM fields of study. In addition to improving the nation’s scientific and technical workforce pipeline, the project seeks to employ a unique commercialization model for interactive educational media that allows for both authentic learning and widespread use by general audiences. This model mixes digital and in-person experiences, digital distribution methods, and mobile experience commercialization strategies that can serve as a model for other educational and commercial interactive media companies.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project addresses two critical issues: engaging more youth in environmental science and engineering education and increasing local environmental data for scientists. The project team will research and develop optimal methods and tools for creating educational and interactive media with rapid scientific data collection capabilities. For youth and educators, the project seeks to engage users in national standards-aligned scientific learning activities. The project will create hyperlocal networks that collect data and make results directly available to local communities so that they can actively track pressing environmental concerns such as migrations and changes in populations of species. The technical goals of the project include creating new processes for connecting local, crowdsourced user input to citizen science data repositories in a way that automates the categorization and validation of that data. The resulting project will actively engage youth in real scientific research and improve data collection for federal and university environmental science programs.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.