Hi Catherine,

This is a great question, and one that our team put much thought into. We have developed a "decision tree" for teacher/volunteer teams to use when creating a project. The teams consider, in the following order, 1) What are the curriculum needs and school competencies that need to be addressed?, 2) What are the characteristics of the school site and the timing (of year) of implementation?, and 3) What are the characteristics of the citizen science project itself? This hierarchy was developed based on our team members' prior experiences with projects that were topic-driven, rather than being determined by the very specific curricular demands of the participants' school/district. Teachers may take on projects that they have a personal interest in, but are ultimately unable to continue if their school develops new competencies, alignment with NGSS, or vertical or horizontal alignment of grade-level expectations.

So back to the volunteers! As we realized that the pairing of teachers and volunteers was highly constrained due to logistical considerations such as geographical proximity or volunteer availability, we often didn't have a match of specific topical expertise. What we have found, however, is that given the nature of elementary science, and our project's focus on the NGSS practices, volunteers almost universally have skills and expertise that are of benefit, such as experience with data collection. Ultimately, this may have increased the reliance of teacher and volunteer on one another, and strengthened the partnership.

All of this is not to say that we may not extend our research findings in the future, concentrate on specific topics, and recruit both teachers and volunteers based on this more targeted approach.

Thanks!

Erik

Erik, I really like the decision tree (pun intended??). We, too, have found that if teachers don't see citizen science as addressing their content standards, they see it as an add-on and are, understandably, unlikely to devote much time to it. Unfortunately, I think this concern is too often overlooked.

Thanks for visiting Patrick. I would add that this sometimes works in the other direction. Often times teachers are attracted to a particular citizen science project due to a personal interest in the topic, however these don't always align with their expected content. These pet projects might survive for a while, but inevitably disappear once any external pressure appears, or when they, rightly, need to devote more time to their grade-level expectations.

For this reason, we ask teachers to first consider what they are expected to teach, then look at the attributes of their study site, and only then do we look for an appropriate project. This is a tougher battle than one would expect! Many teachers latch on to a particular CS project first, and then struggle to force that square peg into the round hole of their broader curriculum.

For the Climate Lab project a few years ago, we had assembled a range of investigation ideas for school-based citizen science related to climate change (some of the ideas were our own, some were others')  To help teachers make choices they could implement within local constraints, we created a "Project selector" that allowed teachers to choose low-, medium- , or high-effort projects -- which in turn were characterized by what I liked to call "baseball cards" - short descripton of the activity, amount of prep required, links to background science/pedagogy info, cross-refs with standards, and information about who would be interested in the data (from local to national).  It helped them place the project that they could fit into their schedules with the larger-scale effort to understand biotic responses to climate change.  It also meant that a teacher could start small, build confidence etc., and then move on to more ambitous projects.  Alas, we couldn't secure further funding, but it was a great prototype!

Brian - great to hear about your "project selector" for teachers. I like the idea of classifying projects according to the amount of time and effort they take!

As mentioned in one of my replies below, we did something similar by creating a "Citizen Science Guide" as part of our teacher/volunteer PD. Our staff chose 12 different CS projects we thought would work well for elementary classes in NH (considering our schoolyard ecology, seasonality, and quality of web-based materials available). We expected our teacher/volunteer teams to select projects from this list, but were surprised that many teams came up with their own custom projects, and then researched corresponding CS projects that could work (using SciStarter and the Nature Groupie website and consultation with Extension staff). We learned that topic choice was more important to participants than ease of options.  

Morning Jamie,

For the purposes of researching teacher self-efficacy we used the science teaching efficacy and belief instrument (STEBI) (Riggs & Enochs 1990). The pre-post survey has approximately 25 – 30 items, and each item prompted a response from the teachers on whether they strongly agree, agree, are uncertain, disagree or strongly disagree with the item statement. We also conducted semi-structured interviews that were complimentary to the surveys. Along with surveys and interviews we also collected the curriculum unit plans that the teachers and Extension science partners designed collaboratively. 

Initial research indicates that elementary teachers vary in their prior experience with NGSS's vision of 3-dimensional learning and are seeking PD support around ways to transform their science teaching to better reflect instruction that engages 2nd-5th graders with the science practices. We are still collecting and analyzing data. However, we have observed an overall increase in NGSS practices in the classroom. The top science practices reported were students’ carrying out investigations, asking scientific questions, analyzing and interpreting data, and designing and using models. 

We are also studying the nature of the partnership between the teachers and science Extension volunteers. To date teachers and volunteers have seen a new pathway to building teacher-community partnerships and value the partnership. We also have observed the role of the volunteers vary across the partnerships and are interested to see what future cohorts indicate about this aspect of the program.

Thank you for your thoughtful questions.

Hi Rachael,

Thank you for your comment about the collaboration piece of the Schoolyard SITES model. To clarify, the partnerships bring together elementary teachers in NH (grades 2nd-5th) with UNH Cooperative Extension volunteers. In general, these individuals are not professional scientists but rather community members who volunteer with one of our established Extension science-based volunteer programs. To this end, these volunteers have prior training in an area of science (typically Life and/or Earth Science). More specifically, UNH Cooperative Extension has several well-established science-based volunteer programs that include: New Hampshire Coverts Project (30 hours of training with expertise in wildlife-based citizen science projects and New Hampshire ecosystems); UNH Marine Docents (150 hours of training with knowledge of marine science topics); Coastal Research Volunteers (3 hours of training to conduct citizen science and stewardship projects in local coastal sites); Natural Resources Stewards (90 hours of training focused on natural resources and ecosystems); and more.

Thanks,

Lara

Hi Sarah!

Sustaining and scaling the program is a topic we are working on as a team. As we refine the model in the next couple years we are also developing a Toolkit that will include a Citizen Science Guide and Curriculum Design Workbook. These products will be reviewed by our advisory board and the next teacher-volunteer cohort to ensure their feasibility and relevancy.

Thank you for your question. Good to hear from you.

Lara

April, thanks for your question about citizen science programs (and your work as a teacher!).

We love the materials and work of JourneyNorth and its work with monarchs and other migrating wildlife. Due to our location in northern New England and our encouragement of hands-on data collection and field investigations, teachers and volunteers sought out projects that worked best with fall, winter, or spring field work. Monarch migration does occur in September here in NH, but that would have meant a rushed start at the beginning of the school year to get students engaged and collecting data (most of our school districts don't start until after Labor Day). So timing and scheduling was a driver away from projects focused on butterflies and other summer phenomena such as flowers, gardens, dragonflies, etc (as engaging as these would be, for sure!).

I am also curious to know more about where (or on what platforms) teachers or teacher/extension volunteer teams have discovered citizen science projects! Have they mostly used word of mouth, other local resources (museums, arboretums, universities, etc.) or project finders like SciStarter.org?

I also find the SITES program to be an interesting example of an intermediary bringing students to citizen science, as I am investigating in my current research!

Haley, thanks for your questions. I just watched your video about intermediaries in citizen science - and I like your idea about the volunteers and teachers being in that role - very cool!

To your questions: We offered a "citizen science bootcamp" to our co-horts, with special training for volunteers, who were charged with researching citizen science options. They learned about 12 different "recommended" citizen science projects that, based on our evaluation, would lend themselves well to schoolyard-based investigations in New Hampshire. To build the guide, we relied on our Extension team's familiarity with both local and national CS projects. UNH Extension hosts a website called Nature Groupie that includes a database of citizen science projects that are local to New England and whose data feeds into regional conservation and stewardship decision-making (see https://naturegroupie.org/citizen-science). In practice, however, we found that teams were more likely to choose the topic of interest (solar energy, water quality, insect diversity, etc.) and then go searching for an appropriate citizen science platform. This was a surprise to us - we expected teams to choose from our suggestions - which was the "easy" path - but many more of them designed a custom investigation. There were several unique approaches that we would not have anticipated. For example, the team who decided to tap maple trees at their school and share their sap data with a local high school that studies (and makes) maple syrup. We concluded this fit the definition of authentic science with data being "used" by others for a larger research effort.  In another case, the teacher-volunteer team really wanted to study something in the coastal habitat (which was a unique environment next to their school). In that case, they found a NH Sea Grant researcher studying invasive green crabs who was willing to train the classrooms in data collection for her work. This was highly custom, but it also met our criteria of the schoolyard data contributing to a larger science project.

I agree it's surprising that they decided to start from scratch as it were, but what amazing experiences for the students! I can imagine having the dedicated help of an Extension volunteer really enhances teachers' ability to pursue projects of personal interest or local relevance. Such an amazing program!

Hi Mary,

As you may have experienced too, the Showcase's 3-minute time limit informed just how much we could share about this project's impacts to date. I recognize that the video really did not include many details about our impacts on the Extension volunteers. So I am really pleased you ask about the impacts on these important partners!

The Schoolyard SITES research is still in-progress. So all our findings are preliminary. Nonetheless, we have data that indicates that overall the volunteers valued the partnerships with the elementary teachers. Also, in general volunteers reported that after their experience with the Schoolyard SITES program they have a 'pathway' for collaborating with teachers in their community.

That being said the volunteers' roles differed depending on the particular teacher (or teachers) they partnered with, the project's content focus, and the volunteer's prior science background. For instance, one Extension volunteer worked with a 4th grade team of teachers to help with the data collection methods, the citizen science protocol integration within the written curriculum, and the usage of the protocol in the schoolyard by the students. A different volunteer worked with a 2nd grade team of teachers to suggest some introductory life science activities to kick-off the curriculum sequence, produced a detailed map of the schoolyard field site for the class, and supported the identification of tree species in the schoolyard while they collected budburst data. Yet another pair of volunteers worked with both 3rd and 4th grade teachers (from the same school) to help create curriculums for each grade level that were vertically aligned and were informed by each other.

I look forward to viewing your video!

Thanks,

Lara

Thanks for your question Meredith. In each cohort, we have indeed had multiple teachers within the same school, more commonly than a single teacher from a single school. In fact, we recruited with that as a suggestion to schools. In most cases, the teachers have been in the same grade and have teamed up to implement the same CS project. Teachers quickly figured out that they can use data from different classes as a way to talk about variability or to compare data sets and findings across classrooms, and they often mentioned the encouragement and support they got from working with each other as a team, along with the support from their volunteer.

As for the ratio of volunteers to teachers, in most cases if multiple teachers from the same school and grade were participating together, they worked with a single volunteer (so the ratio would be 2 teachers:1 volunteer). In these cases there was extensive collaboration between the teachers which meant it wasn't an additional burden of time on the volunteer. It worked well. Further, due to the high (time/training) commitment required of volunteers in this project, in each cohort we had fewer volunteers than teachers participating, so the 2:1 ratio was a necessity.

Thank you for sharing, Malin!  Our project is focused on developing supports for 5th grade teachers' implementation of two CS projects (CoCoRaHS & The Lost Ladybug Project), and we will begin recruiting teachers in the fall, so it's interesting to learn more about your approach. 

Hello Meredith,

Thank you for viewing our video!

To add to Malin's comment, in the past two years the teacher-volunteer teams have designed 15 schoolyard curriculums that align with the grade level curriculum expectations and NGSS standards plus integrate a relevant citizen science project. You mentioned CoCoRaHS. Five of these Schoolyard SITES curriculum projects integrated CoCoRaHS and many others used Project FeederWatch, GLOBE, E-Bird, and iNaturalist.

It's been interesting to observe what CS project works best for particular grades, NGSS performance expectations, seasons, urban vs. suburban locations and other parameters. It's also been eye opening to see the varying ways the CS projects have been integrated while still framing the curriculum with their own essential question relevant to the schoolyard.

Thanks,

Lara

Kate, thank you for watching our video. We have just started to discuss how the Schoolyard SITES Toolkit for educators may also be applicable to informal educators and science education centers. I appreciate you sharing this perspective with our team. Let's stay in touch.

Lara