Connecting Undergraduates to Biodiversity Instruction through Citizen Science

该项目旨在通过建立支持积极参与现实世界科学研究的教学实践来提高学生对科学的忠诚度，从而为国家利益服务。社区参与正式的科学研究，或公民科学，具有成为本科科学教育和学习的变革性社会创新的巨大潜力。参与公民科学项目的学生是他们学习的积极伙伴，使他们对科学对社区的重要性有了更深的理解，并增加了他们在科学领域保持职业道路的可能性。将公民科学相关课程引入本科生的一个主要障碍是，教师缺乏将他们的科学专业知识转化为学生充分参与的课堂活动所需的教育培训。这项工作将通过在马萨诸塞州南海岸地区的不同机构中创建一个教师社区来消除这一障碍，该社区将共同开发公民科学项目，监督他们如何执行项目，并评估对学生的影响。利用与生物多样性和气候变化相关的公民科学项目，该项目将测试如何将教师参与者从传统的讲座转变为学生积极参与现实世界的数据收集和分析的模式，从而制定将基于公民科学的本科课程扩展到该国其他地区和其他科学学科领域的蓝图。因此，除了在提高区域范围内本科生的保留率方面取得巨大飞跃外，该项目的新颖教育方法将为旨在保护和恢复受人类环境变化威胁的本地生物多样性的科学研究工作做出重大贡献。研究表明，积极参与现实世界科学探索的教学创新可以改善本科生的态度、成绩和保留率。然而，大多数科学教师虽然是本学科的内容专家，但往往缺乏将他们的科学专业知识转化为学生充分参与的课程所需的教学培训。该项目的目标是通过将社区科学或“公民”科学纳入本科课堂，为大学科学教师提供这种支持。实现这一目标的手段将是一系列专业发展研讨会（暑期学院），来自马萨诸塞州南海岸地区的教师将聚集在一起，学习如何在他们的本科课程中创建、促进和维护以生物多样性和气候为重点的公民科学项目。通过为教师提供从传统讲座形式转变为学生积极参与现实世界数据收集和分析的工具，该项目有望在区域范围内大幅提高学生保留率。该项目将通过一项研究计划彻底记录，该计划通过混合方法设计调查项目的转换性质。它包括严格的评估和经验丰富的顾问委员会。本项目收集的教育数据将用于阐明发展基于社会科学问题的公民科学项目的最佳方法，并展示提高科学记忆力的方法。这些项目将由PI团队通过Kaput STEM教育研究与创新中心进行协调和支持，该中心拥有广泛协调和传播所需的基础设施和专业知识，将公众与科学家联系起来。NSF IUSE: EDU项目支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过其参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。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。

This project aims to serve the national interest by establishing teaching practices that support active engagement with real-world scientific research to increase student retention in the sciences. Community participation in formal scientific research, or citizen science, has tremendous potential to be a transformative social innovation for undergraduate science education and learning. Students engaged with citizen science projects are active partners in their learning, providing them with a deeper understanding of the importance of science to the community and increasing the likelihood that they will maintain a career path in the sciences. One major obstacle to bringing citizen science-related curriculum to undergraduates is that faculty lack the educational training needed to translate their scientific expertise into classroom activities that fully engage students. This work will remove this obstacle by creating a community of faculty among diverse institutions in the South Coast region of Massachusetts that will work together to develop citizen science projects, monitor how they execute their projects, and assess the impacts on their students. Using citizen science projects related to biodiversity and climate change, this project will test a model for how to shift faculty participants from traditional lecture to active involvement of students in real-world data collection and analysis, resulting in the development of a blueprint for expanding citizen science-based undergraduate curriculum to other regions of the country and to other scientific subject areas. Thus, in addition to making a quantum leap in improving retention in undergraduate science at a regional scale, this project’s novel educational approach will make a significant contribution to scientific research efforts aimed at conserving and restoring native biodiversity threatened by human-induced environmental change. Research has shown that teaching innovations that involve active participation in real-world science exploration improves undergraduate student attitudes, achievement, and retention. Yet, most science faculty, while content experts in their discipline, often lack pedagogical training needed to translate their scientific expertise into curriculum that fully engages their students. The goal of this project is to provide this type of support for college science faculty through the incorporation of community-based or ‘citizen’ science into their undergraduate classrooms. The means to accomplish this goal will be a series of professional development workshops (Summer Institutes) where faculty from the South Coast region of Massachusetts will gather to learn how to create, contribute to, and maintain biodiversity- and climate-focused citizen science projects in their undergraduate courses. By providing the tools for faculty to shift from a traditional lecture format to the active involvement of students in real-world data collection and analysis, this project expects to effect a substantial increase in student retention at a regional scale. This project will be thoroughly documented by a research plan that investigates the transformational nature of the project through a mixed methods design. It includes rigorous assessment and an experienced advisory board. Educational data collected in this project will be used to elucidate the best methods to develop socio-scientific issues-based citizen science projects and demonstrate a means to improve retention in science. The projects will be coordinated and supported by the PI team through the Kaput Center for Research & Innovation in STEM Education which has the infrastructure and expertise needed for widespread coordination and dissemination to connect the public with scientists. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through its Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.