We are pleased to be hosting three engaging webinars in the month of June, two from organizational partners, and one from our Ethics Working Group. Webinars are one way that the CSA works to engage citizen science practitioners through the sharing of tools, tips, and reflections that highlight best practices and emerging issues in citizen science.

These FREE Webinars are available to all – please register via the links below to confirm your place and receive access instructions. Details below.

SciStarter Education: a New EdTech Platform for School Districts and Universities

Monday June 10th, 2pm EST
REGISTER HERE

With support from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and foundations, SciStarter.org is the leading citizen science hub on the Internet. Building on this grant-supported foundation, SciStarter is deploying a new EdTech product for school districts and universities.

SciStarter Education is an EdTech platform with science participation + engagement as its key goal (with supplementary curriculum):

• Students participate in actual science projects that we curate based on your district’s specific STEM curriculum; projects aligned with UN Global Sustainable Development Goals
• Students work in an interactive web portal for completing projects, recording observations, reflecting on what students have learned
• Students hear from scientists at academic institutions and government agencies
• Students can fulfill community service requirement credits via citizen science
• Teachers receive training and PD materials
• Once a class has completed at least one curated SciStarter Project, they can build their own community-based projects in the portal to address issues about which they are curious or concerned
• Integration with rostering and enrollment data for single sign on and one-click authentication linking teachers with their students in SciStarter Education
• District, School, Classroom, and Student-level analytics dashboards to measure individual and collective impact

Learn how Broward (FL) County School District and North Carolina State University are currently leveraging SciStarter Education and how you can bring this resource to your district or university!

Presented by Leonora Shell Education Program Co-Director SciStarter.com

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Reflecting on Ethical Dimensions of Participant-Led Research

A Webinar from CSA’s Ethics Working Group, presented by Camille Nebeker (UC San Diego) and Gary Wolf (Quantified Self Lab)

Thursday June 20th, 1pm EST
REGISTER HERE

Participant-led research (PLR) is a rapidly developing form of citizen science in which individuals can create personal and generalizable knowledge – typically in the health domain. Although PLR lacks a formal framework for ethical review, ethical issues should not be neglected. This webinar will describe how a PLR cohort consisting of 24 self-trackers: (1) provided structured approaches to ethical reflection before and throughout their study and (2) drafted principles to encourage further development of the governance and ethical review of PLR.

This webinar provides an example why it’s important to create processes to promote reflection and conversations about the ethical dimensions of PLR – especially when a formal external ethics review isn’t required. How to initiate discussions about potential study risks and benefits is important at the beginning as well as over the course of conducting a PLR study. During this webinar, we will talk about how we did this and present a checklist that was informed by the group. The 9-item checklist prompts discussion about, for example, transparency, access to experts and data management and is a tool for promoting trust among the cohort.

Presented by: Camille Nebeker, EdD, MS | Assistant Professor | Founder/Director, Research Center for Optimal Digital Ethics – Health (ReCODE Health) | Department of Family Medicine & Public Health | School of Medicine | UC San Diego, and Gary Wolf, Co-founder Quantified Self and Director of Quantified Self Lab

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A Wide-Angle Lens on Volunteer Engagement for Citizen Science: Snapshots from the Field

Thursday June 27th, 2pm EST
REGISTER HERE

Citizen science programs ask volunteers to help with a variety of tasks, including monitoring, reporting, analysis, and even outreach. But do you struggle to make the most of volunteer potential? This session will introduce a model that describes the full life cycle of a volunteer’s experience across their volunteering career, putting training in the context of other essential program components. This model is easily adaptable to any volunteer program that involves initial training prior to service, such as is commonly required in citizen science.

Presenters will use anecdotes, stories, case studies and scenarios to provide real world examples of the theories presented, and participants will be invited to share their own experiences and ideas. By zooming out the focus to a wide-angle view of a volunteer’s experience, the research-based model grounded in real examples provide useful guidance for a work plan for improving volunteer engagement. This interactive webinar highlight the many points in the cycle at which you can support volunteers so that they can be successful and sustain their volunteer service.

Read more about this research behind this webinar in this article in the Journal of Extension: https://www.joe.org/joe/2017august/tt7.php

Presenters: Andrea Lorek Strauss, Amy Rager, Britt Forsberg, University of Minnesota Extension

We have created an playlist on our YouTube channel with archived webinars that you can VIEW HERE.

Posted on: May 25, 2019  |  Category: Blog, CSA Blog, Ethics Working Group, News, Webinars