Getting dirty with citizen science: lessons learned from engaging the public in hands-on citizen science at a museum field station

Citizen science has played an increasingly large role in the informal education offerings at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and has become a powerful tool for engaging visitors in authentic science. At the Museum’s... [ view full abstract ]

Citizen science has played an increasingly large role in the informal education offerings at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and has become a powerful tool for engaging visitors in authentic science. At the Museum’s Prairie Ridge Ecostation field station, hands-on, outdoor citizen science programs are offered to the public regularly, from weekly drop-in citizen science hikes to K-12 educational programs to multi-day citizen science training workshops for teachers and environmental educators. Through these programs, we have learned several important lessons about citizen science that have shaped how we develop new public programs, how we train citizen scientists, and how we create new citizen science projects at our institution. This storytelling presentation will describe how we engage visitors in outdoor citizen science at Prairie Ridge and will share the lessons learned through these programs, including 1) the general barriers to participation we’ve identified for our participants, 2) the value of observing people doing citizen science in the field, 3) how we engage people of all ages and interest levels in citizen science, and 4) how working with environmental education centers and other public outdoor facilities can improve your citizen science projects. Our field station benefits hugely from having an active citizen science program as well, and I’ll share some of the ways that our citizen science programming has improved our facility as our visitors learn about science. We spend a lot of time in the field with citizen scientists from all walks of life, observing how and why our participants get involved. Many of the lessons we’ve learned could be applied by other citizen science practitioners to create more effective and more engaging citizen science projects and programs, so join me as I share what we’ve learned!