Citizen science is recognized as an important tool to engage the public in important scientific and environmental issues that impact them. Mosquito surveillance-based citizen science in college curricula have not received much attention even though its usage has the potential to actively engage students in inquiry and elevate student support for…

This research analyzes the effect of the implementation of citizen science activities in the Environmental Education (EE) subject program of the Degree in Primary Education applying Experiential Learning Theory. Environmental Attitudes Inventory (EAI) was used to measure the change in environmental attitudes (EA) of 173 preservice teachers through…

Citizen science's (CS) deployment and benefit over the last ten years have been remarkably substantial in their contributions to the massification of citizen participation in tech-based CS projects. Insights into how CS projects influence community changes through proposals of actions and public policies are essential to understanding how they…

Despite the current interest in Open Science in the scientific community, it is not clear if Open Science will succeed in higher education. Open Science is based on three basic ideas: open data, open results, and open publication. If these principles can be successfully implemented, it will allow for much greater participation in the scientific…

Science education that fosters scientific competency and engagement prepares students to become informed civic participants in modern society. Teaching strategies that encourage scientific engagement are especially important in rural settings, as these students are less likely to pursue scientific careers or use science in their everyday lives. To…

Citizen science is a research collaboration between scientists and volunteers who provide data for education, conservation, and environmental protection. Volunteers, often the locals in the area, provide data on species occurrence while researchers perform distribution mapping or other data analysis. Social networking sites including Facebook,…

Ensuring that learning is participatory and even further democratized seems particularly important at a time when people are kept apart because of a COVID-19 pandemic that thrives on proximity. Whilst learning is based on exchanges, it also benefits from the existence of a learning community, the access to which needs to be equal and taking…

Citizen science, research in which members of the public actively contribute scientific data, has recently evolved as a means to support scientific inquiry in the classroom, particularly in fields related to ecology and environmental science. Our research focuses on a collaborative project with teacher candidates, a science education professor,…

Started in north-east England in 2015, MammalWeb aims to improve our knowledge of British mammals through the use of motion-sensing camera traps. Fundamental to the project is the involvement of local communities and individuals who act as citizen scientists. They contribute to the collection and analysis of the camera trap photographic data.…

The distributed pharmaceutical analysis laboratory (DPAL) is a collaboration between 30 academic institutions around the world, whose goal is to determine the quality of medicines collected from partner organizations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Institutions complete system suitability for a high-performance liquid chromatography…

One of the goals for requiring all college students to take science courses is to develop critical thinking about scientific issues they will encounter as citizens, consumers, and patients. This article integrates skill development activities targeting civic scientific literacy skills in a nonscience majors (liberal arts) biochemistry course, but…

Citizen science projects continue to grow in popularity, providing opportunities for nonexpert volunteers to contribute to and become personally invested in rigorous scientific research. Academic libraries, aiming to promote and provide tools and resources to master scientific and information literacy, can support these efforts. While few examples…

The decline in hummingbird populations and shifts in their movements may adversely affect their role as pollinators and, in turn, plant biodiversity (Allen-Wardell et al. 1998). For example, Hadley et al. (2014) discovered that larger fragments of forest correlated with larger hummingbird populations and more seeds of "H. tortuosa" being…

Deliberative democracy, a consensus model of decision making, has been used in real-life policy making involving controversial, science-related issues to increase citizen participation and engagement. Here, we describe a pedagogical approach based on this model implemented in a large, lecture-based, nonmajors introductory biology course at an…