Learning Through Citizen Science: Enhancing Opportunities by Design

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

National Academies: “Scientific research that involves nonscientists contributing to research processes – also known as ‘citizen science’ – supports participants’ learning, engages the public in science, contributes to community scientific literacy, and can serve as a valuable tool to facilitate larger scale research, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  If one of the goals of a citizen science project is to advance learning, designers should plan for it by defining intended learning outcomes and using evidence-based strategies to reach those outcomes.

“This report affirms that citizen science projects can help participants learn scientific practices and content, but most likely only if the projects are designed to support learning,” says Rajul Pandya, chair of the committee that wrote the report and director, Thriving Earth Exchange, AGU.  

The term “citizen science” can be applied to a wide variety of projects that invite nonscientists to engage in doing science with the intended goal of advancing scientific knowledge or application. For example, a citizen science project might engage community members in collecting data to monitor the health of a local stream. As another example, among the oldest continuous organized datasets in the United States are records kept by farmers and agricultural organizations that document the timing of important events, such as sowing, harvests, and pest outbreaks.

Citizen science can support science learning in several ways, the report says. It offers people the opportunity to participate in authentic scientific endeavors, encourages learning through projects conducted in real-world contexts, supports rich social interaction that deepens learning, and engages participants with real data. Citizen science also includes projects that grow out of a community’s desire to address an inequity or advance a priority. For example, the West-Oakland Indicators Project, a community group in Oakland, Calif., self-organizes to collect and analyze air quality data and uses that data to address trucking in and around schools to reduce local children’s exposure to air pollution. When communities can work alongside scientists to advance their priorities, enhanced community science literacy is one possible outcome….

In order to maximize learning outcomes, the report recommends that designers and practitioners of citizen science projects should intentionally build them for learning. This involves knowing the audience; intentionally designing for diversity; engaging stakeholders in the design; supporting multiple kinds of participant engagement; encouraging social interaction; building learning supports into the project; and iteratively improving projects through evaluation and refinement.  Engaging stakeholders and participants in design and implementation results in more learning for all participants, which can support other project goals. 

The report also lays out a research agenda that can help to build the field of citizen science by filling gaps in the current understanding of how citizen science can support science learning and enhance science education. Researchers should consider three important factors: citizen science extends beyond academia and therefore, evidence for practices that advance learning can be found outside of peer-reviewed literature; research should include attention to practice and link theory to application; and attention must be given to diversity in all research, including ensuring broad participation in the design and implementation of the research. Pursuing new lines of inquiry can help add value to the existing research, make future research more productive, and provide support for effective project implementation….(More)”.


These patients are sharing their data to improve healthcare standards

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by John McKenna: “We’ve all heard about donating blood, but how about donating data?

Chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, heart disease and epilepsy are predicted by the World Health Organization to account for 57% of all disease by 2020.

Heart disease and stroke are the world’s biggest killers.

This has led some experts to call NCDs the “greatest challenge to global health”.

Could data provide the answer?

Today over 600,000 patients from around the world share data on more than 2,800 chronic diseases to improve research and treatment of their conditions.

People who join the PatientsLikeMe online community share information on everything from their medication and treatment plans to their emotional struggles.

Many of the participants say that it is hugely beneficial just to know there is someone else out there going through similar experiences.

But through its use of data, the platform also has the potential for far more wide-ranging benefits to help improve the quality of life for patients with chronic conditions.

Give data, get data

PatientsLikeMe is one of a swathe of emerging data platforms in the healthcare sector helping provide a range of tech solutions to health problems, including speeding up the process of clinical trials using Real Time Data Analysis or using blockchain to enable the secure sharing of patient data.

Its philosophy is “give data, get data”. In practice it means that every patient using the website has access to an array of crowd-sourced information from the wider community, such as common medication side-effects, and patterns in sufferers’ symptoms and behaviour….(More)”.

Giving Voice to Patients: Developing a Discussion Method to Involve Patients in Translational Research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Marianne Boenink, Lieke van der Scheer, Elisa Garcia and Simone van der Burg in NanoEthics: “Biomedical research policy in recent years has often tried to make such research more ‘translational’, aiming to facilitate the transfer of insights from research and development (R&D) to health care for the benefit of future users. Involving patients in deliberations about and design of biomedical research may increase the quality of R&D and of resulting innovations and thus contribute to translation. However, patient involvement in biomedical research is not an easy feat. This paper discusses the development of a method for involving patients in (translational) biomedical research aiming to address its main challenges.

After reviewing the potential challenges of patient involvement, we formulate three requirements for any method to meaningfully involve patients in (translational) biomedical research. It should enable patients (1) to put forward their experiential knowledge, (2) to develop a rich view of what an envisioned innovation might look like and do, and (3) to connect their experiential knowledge with the envisioned innovation. We then describe how we developed the card-based discussion method ‘Voice of patients’, and discuss to what extent the method, when used in four focus groups, satisfied these requirements. We conclude that the method is quite successful in mobilising patients’ experiential knowledge, in stimulating their imaginaries of the innovation under discussion and to some extent also in connecting these two. More work is needed to translate patients’ considerations into recommendations relevant to researchers’ activities. It also seems wise to broaden the audience for patients’ considerations to other actors working on a specific innovation….(More)”

Crowdlaw: Collective Intelligence and Lawmaking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Beth Noveck in Analyse & Kritik: “To tackle the fast-moving challenges of our age, law and policymaking must become more flexible, evolutionary and agile. Thus, in this Essay we examine ‘crowdlaw’, namely how city councils at the local level and parliaments at the regional and national level are turning to technology to engage with citizens at every stage of the law and policymaking process.

As we hope to demonstrate, crowdlaw holds the promise of improving the quality and effectiveness of outcomes by enabling policymakers to interact with a broader public using methods designed to serve the needs of both institutions and individuals. crowdlaw is less a prescription for more deliberation to ensure greater procedural legitimacy by having better inputs into lawmaking processes than a practical demand for more collaborative approaches to problem-solving that yield better outputs, namely policies that achieve their intended aims. However, as we shall explore, the projects that most enhance the epistemic quality of lawmaking are those that are designed to meet the specific informational needs for that stage of problem-solving….(More)”,

Crowdsourced data informs women which streets are safe

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “Safe & the City is a free app designed to help users identify which streets are safe for them. Sexual harassment and violent crimes against women in particular are a big problem in many urban environments. This app uses crowdsourced data and crime statistics to help female pedestrians stay safe.

It is a development of traditional navigation apps but instead of simply providing the fastest route, it also has information on what is the safest. The Live Map relies on user data. Victims can report harassment or assault on the app. The information will then be available to other users to warn them of a potential threat in the area. Incidents can be ranked from a feeling of discomfort or threat, verbal harassment, or a physical assault. Whilst navigating, the Live Map can also alert users to potentially dangerous intersections coming. This reminds people to stay alert and not only focus on their phone while walking.

The Safe Sites feature is also a way of incorporating the community. Businesses and organisations can register to be Safe Sites. They will then receive training from SafeSeekers in how to provide the best support and assistance in emergency situations. The locations of such Sites will be available on the app, should a user need one.

The IOS app launched in March 2018 on International Women’s Day. It is currently only available for London…(More)”

It’s time to let citizens tackle the wickedest public problems

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Gabriella Capone at apolitical (a winner of the 2018 Apolitical Young Thought Leaders competition): “Rain ravaged Gdańsk in 2016, taking the lives of two residents and causing millions of euros in damage. Despite its 700-year history of flooding the city was overwhelmed by these especially devastating floods. Also, Gdańsk is one of the European coasts most exposed to rising sea levels. It needed a new approach to avoid similar outcomes for the next, inevitable encounter with this worsening problem.

Bringing in citizens to tackle such a difficult issue was not the obvious course of action. Yet this was the proposal of Dr. Marcin Gerwin, an advocate from a neighbouring town who paved the way for Poland’s first participatory budgeting experience.

Mayor Adamowicz of Gdańsk agreed and, within a year, they welcomed about 60 people to the first Citizens Assembly on flood mitigation. Implemented by Dr. Gerwin and a team of coordinators, the Assembly convened over four Saturdays, heard expert testimony, and devised solutions.

The Assembly was not only deliberative and educational, it was action-oriented. Mayor Adamowicz committed to implement proposals on which 80% or more of participants agreed. The final 16 proposals included the investment of nearly $40 million USD in monitoring systems and infrastructure, subsidies to incentivise individuals to improve water management on their property, and an educational “Do Not Flood” campaign to highlight emergency resources.

It may seem risky to outsource the solving of difficult issues to citizens. Yet, when properly designed, public problem-solving can produce creative resolutions to formidable challenges. Beyond Poland, public problem-solving initiatives in Mexico and the United States are making headway on pervasive issues, from flooding to air pollution, to technology in public spaces.

The GovLab, with support from the Tinker Foundation, is analysing what makes for more successful public problem-solving as part of its City Challenges program. Below, I provide a glimpse into the types of design choices that can amplify the impact of public problem-solving….(More)

Lost and Saved . . . Again: The Moral Panic about the Loss of Community Takes Hold of Social Media

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Keith N. Hampton and Barry Wellman in Contemporary Sociology:”Why does every generation believe that relationships were stronger and community better in the recent past? Lamenting about the loss of community, based on a selective perception of the present and an idealization of ‘‘traditional community,’’ dims awareness of powerful inequalities and cleavages that have always pervaded human society and favors deterministic models over a nuanced understanding of how network affordances contribute to different outcomes. The beˆtes noirs have varied according to the moral panic of the times: industrialization, bureaucratization, urbanization, capitalism, socialism, and technological developments have all been tabbed by such diverse commentators as Thomas Jefferson (1784), Karl Marx (1852), Louis Wirth (1938), Maurice Stein (1960), Robert Bellah et al. (1996), and Tom Brokaw (1998). Each time, observers look back nostalgically to what they supposed were the supportive, solidary communities of the previous generation. Since the advent of the internet, the moral panicers have seized on this technology as the latest cause of lost community, pointing with alarm to what digital technologies are doing to relationships. As the focus shifts to social media and mobile devices, the panic seems particularly acute….

Taylor Dotson’s (2017) recent book Technically Together has a broader timeline for the demise of community. He sees it as happen- ing around the time the internet was popularized, with community even worse off as a result of Facebook and mobile devices. Dotson not only blames new technologies for the decline of community, but social theory, specifically the theory and the practice of ‘‘networked individualism’’: the relational turn from bounded, densely knit local groups to multiple, partial, often far-flung social networks (Rainie and Wellman 2012). Dotson takes the admirable position that social science should do more to imagine different outcomes, new technological possibilities that can be created by tossing aside the trends of today and engineering social change through design….

Some alarm in the recognition that the nature of community is changing as technologies change is sensible, and we have no quarrel with the collective desire to have better, more supportive friends, families, and communities. As Dotson implies, the maneuverability in having one’s own individually networked community can come at the cost of local group solidarity. Indeed, we have also taken action that does more than pontificate to promote local community, building community on and offline (Hampton 2011).

Yet part of contemporary unease comes from a selective perception of the present and an idealization of other forms of community. There is nostalgia for a perfect form of community that never was. Longing for a time when the grass was ever greener dims an awareness of the powerful stresses and cleavages that have always pervaded human society. And advocates, such as Dotson (2017), who suggest the need to save a particular type of community at the expense of another, often do so blind of the potential tradeoffs….(More)”

The ‘Gateway Drug to Democracy’

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Video by Jay Arthur Sterrenberg at The Atlantic: “The fastest way to reveal a nation’s priorities is to take a look at its budget. Where money is allocated, improvements and expansions are made; where costs are cut, institutions and policies wither. In America and other similar democracies, political candidates campaign on budget promises, but it can be difficult to maintain transparency—and enforce accountability—once elected into office.

“Budgets are the essence of what government does,” says a woman at a community meeting in Jay Arthur Sterrenberg’s short documentary, Public Money. “We’re cutting out the rhetoric about budgeting and allowing community members to make direct decisions about money in our community.”

She’s talking about participatory budgeting, an innovative democratic process that has been under way in New York City since 2011. Once a year, citizens in participating council districts across the city propose and vote on how to spend $1 million in their neighborhood.

“It results in better budget decisions,” the New York city council’s website reads, “because who better knows the needs of our community than the people who live there?”

Participatory budgeting was first introduced on a large scale in Porto Alegre, Brazil. “For over 25 years, there have been all kinds of massive improvements in city infrastructure, and especially improved conditions in poorer neighborhoods,” Sterrenberg told The Atlantic. Today, there are more than 1,500 participatory budgets around the world.

Public Money, from Meerkat Media Collective, follows one cycle of the participatory-budget process in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Residents are tasked with proposing project ideas, such as building a community center in the local library, installing security cameras in the park, and fixing potholes in the streets. Committees workshop, debate, and ultimately vote for their favorite projects, which—once deemed viable by the city government—go to the ballot. A public vote is held, and winning projects are funded.

The film takes an observational approach to what Sterrenberg describes as a “hard-to-explain process that has such potential to overhaul our politics.”…(More)”

Crowd-mapping gender equality – a powerful tool for shaping a better city launches in Melbourne

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Nicole Kalms at The Conversation: “Inequity in cities has a long history. The importance of social and community planning to meet the challenge of creating people-centred cities looms large. While planners, government and designers have long understood the problem, uncovering the many important marginalised stories is an enormous task.

ion: “Inequity in cities has a long history. The importance of social and community planning to meet the challenge of creating people-centred cities looms large. While planners, government and designers have long understood the problem, uncovering the many important marginalised stories is an enormous task.

Technology – so often bemoaned – has provided an unexpected and powerful primary tool for designers and makers of cities. Crowd-mapping asks the community to anonymously engage and map their experiences using their smartphones and via a web app. The focus of the new Gender Equality Map launched today in two pilot locations in Melbourne is on equality or inequality in their neighbourhood.

How does it work?

Participants can map their experience of equality or inequality in their neighbourhood using locator pins. Author provided

Crowd-mapping generates geolocative data. This is made up of points “dropped” to a precise geographical location. The data can then be analysed and synthesised for insights, tendencies and “hotspots”.

The diversity of its applications shows the adaptability of the method. The digital, community-based method of crowd-mapping has been used across the globe. Under-represented citizens have embraced the opportunity to tell their stories as a way to engage with and change their experience of cities….(More)”

Reach is crowdsourcing street criminal incidents to reduce crime in Lima

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Michael Krumholtz at LATAM Tech: “Unfortunately, in Latin America and many other places around the world, robberies are a part of urban life. Moisés Salazar of Lima has been a victim of petty crime in the streets, which is what led him to create Reach.

The application that markets itself as a kind of Waze for street crime alerts users through a map of incident reports or crimes that display visibly on your phone….

Salazar said that Reach helps users before, during and after incidents that could victimize them. That’s because the map allows users to avoid certain areas where a crime may have just happened or is being carried out.

In addition, there is a panic button that users can push if they find themselves in danger or in need of authorities. After the fact, that data then gets made public and can be analyzed by expert users or authorities wanting to see which incidents occur most commonly and where they occur.

Reach is very similar to the U.S. application Citizen, which is a crime avoidance tool used in major metropolitan areas in the U.S. like New York. That application alerts users to crime reports in their neighborhoods and gives them a forum to either record anything they witness or talk about it with other users….(More)”.