Free tools designed to support learning and participation in citizen science projects.

1. Tools and approaches from the Citizen Inquiry group
Second International ECSA Conference 2018
3–5 June 2018 | Geneva, Switzerland
Empowering citizens to participate
in scientific endeavours:
Dr Christothea Herodotou

2. Citizen Inquiry Group
http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/citizen-inquiry/

3. Vision…
The vision of the Citizen Inquiry group is to educate
citizens in scientific thinking and empower them in
initiating or joining citizen science projects across
disciplines both social and natural sciences. Citizen inquiry
researchers have designed and evaluated a set of web-
based and mobile tools to scaffold learning, participation,
and communication between citizens.
Appropriate tools and supportive online communities can
enable citizens to practice and develop scientific thinking
skills while also democratise research by allowing the
public to contribute to all the stages of the scientific
research.

4. • Citizen science platform for
biodiversity
• Post an observation, upload a
photo and the community
help give an identification
• Anyone can record and learn
about wildlife; helping each
others while building ID skills
• Growing online community of
over 66,000; with both
experts and novices
iSpotnature.org

5. Citizen science
& learning model
• Biological data recording from
citizen scientists
• A learning approach embedded
through an inquiry process (iSpot
projects – personalised filters)
• Supportive technology mediating
citizen science learning (iSpot
quizzes – self assessment)
A learning design framed by a five-
step model: from exploring nature
through to recognised learning actions*
* Ansine, J., Dodd, M., Robinson, D., McAndrew, P., (2017) Exploring citizen science and inquiry learning through iSpotnature.org.
Chapter 6 in Herodotou, C., Sharples, M., Scanlon, E. (eds) Citizen Inquiry: Synthesising citizen science and inquiry learning. Routledge.
iSpot Project filter and iSpot quizzes
Contact: janice.ansine@open.ac.uk
iSpotnature.org

6. Situ8 is a tool to let you annotate
physical places with digital information
• View, create and share Media Objects (“Mo”s)
• Filter by date, author, subject and/or tag
• Use for formal or informal learning, citizen
science and collection of fieldwork data
Situ8

7. Try it for
yourself!
www.situ8.org
• Gain different perspectives on how
others view our world
• Potential for use with leisure learning
e.g. gardening, tourism and other
informal practices, supporting routes
into open education
situ8@open.ac.uk
@situ8_orgSitu8

8. beewatch.abdn.ac.uk
• Encourages participation in all activities
• Everyone participates in species identification using a key
• Bayesian Inference Models estimates likelihood of consensus
identification, and utilises input from all participants, by modelling their
biases
• Creates opportunities for learning
• About bumblebees, habitats, biological identification
Consensus Model
Identification Key
BeeWatch

9. Contact: Advaith Siddharthan (OU)
Rene van der Wall (U. Aberdeen)
• Formative feedback using Natural Language Generation Technology
• to facilitate engagement and learning
• Provides pollinator-friendly gardening advice from citizen science data to
facilitate civic action through learning
BeeWatch

10. www.nquire-it.org
nQuire

11. 1
1
Win-it missions text-based missions,
set challenges with prizes for the
winners.
Sense-it missions make use of the
Sense-it mobile app to collect and
share data using smartphone sensors.
Spot-it missions allow users to
capture images and spot things
around them.
Social features: comments, forums, SNS
nquire-it.org
nQuire

12. 1
2
• Available in Google play
• Linked to nQuire-it
platform
• Sense-it missions

13. www.nquire.org.uk

14. nQuire as an enabling
technology for the creation
of diverse citizen science
projects by both citizens and
researchers.
Contact: christothea.herodotou@open.ac.uk. @herodotouc

15. 1
5
15

17. Thank you 
Questions?
christothea.herodotou@open.ac.uk
@herodotouc