Citizen Science Academy: Exploring Online Professional Development Courses for Educators and Researchers

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Citizen Science Academy (CSA) came about to address the need for online professional development (PD) resources and opportunities that explicitly focus on implementing Citizen... [ view full abstract ]

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Citizen Science Academy (CSA) came about to address the need for online professional development (PD) resources and opportunities that explicitly focus on implementing Citizen Science (CS) in diverse educational settings. In addition, it became clear that professional field staff at government agencies and institutions would also be able to use online courses to advance their knowledge of CS programs that might be useful in their work. In the past decade, there has been more widespread acceptance of online PD courses as viable alternatives to face to face classes and workshops. This acceptance, along with the current proliferation of online ecology based citizen science programs, spurred the development of NEON’s CSA (citizenscienceacademy.org) dedicated to providing online courses and resources to facilitate effective implementation of programs designed to engage the public in scientific data collection and analysis. Using NEON’s Project BudBurst (budburst.org) as the pilot, an online, self paced course for informal and formal educators was developed, piloted, and evaluated. An intended outcome of this pilot project was the development of best practices based on lessons learned that could be used for the development of future NEON online courses and shared with the citizen science community at large. The pilot clearly demonstrated the in interest in an online citizen science course. As a result the initial pilot, several more citizen science based online courses have been developed and are being offered 4 times a year. We are currently developing online courses for professional staff at USDA Forest Service and US Fish and Wildlife that will be released in 2015.