Developing activities around participatory science projects
An important component of developing course activities around participatory science projects is linking the participatory activity with course learning objectives. The content in Wild Davis lends itself rather easily to participatory science projects, making these links easier than they might be in other courses. Each week’s content is structured around a single chapter of the California Naturalist Handbook for which several participatory science projects could be relevant. For example, one chapter of the Handbook broadly covers California’s animal communities, including trophic interactions, functional groups, introduced and invasive animals, as well as highlights of interesting or iconic California wildlife in a variety of taxonomic groups. Participatory science projects that could be integrated into this content include (but are not limited to):
Weekly points were assigned for completing each activity, which required the students to provide ‘evidence’ of their participation in the project. In most cases, this took the form of uploading a screenshot of their submission to the participatory science project and a short description of how and where they collected their data to the course LMS or Gradescope assignment.
In the majority of cases, the instructor contributed data or observations to the project prior to the course session in which the activity was introduced and could then share their data/observations as an example. Interacting with the data submission portal prior to assigning the activity was also important for troubleshooting problems the students might encounter in completing the activity. For example, GLOBE Cloud Observer requires submitted observations to be ‘reviewed’ before they are visible in the public data record. This extra step meant that students needed to either 1) complete the activity at least a day before the assignment deadline to ensure their observations were visible to the instructor, or 2) take a screenshot of their observation prior to submitting it to the portal, which they could share with the instructor to document their activity.