Thursday 16th February
Speaker: Tina Philips from the Ornithology lab
Theme: Engagement, motivations and incentives
Tina Phillips’ main concern is to develop evaluation models of learning outcomes. In her understanding educational outcomes are not just cognitive but also attitude and behavioural outcomes
She was involved in publishing the CAISE inquiry group report 2009:
– scarcity of quality evaluations – evaluating programs is very challenging
– higher engagement suggests deeper learning – help define question and disseminate data
– need for more sensitive measures – contextually appropriate – already have some innate interest in science
– no opportunity for cross programmatic analyses – isolated evaluations
– everybody said evaluation is very important but people didn’t know how to do it
She says data quality and accuracy are the main thing that practitioners worry about
– program success, improvement
– content knowledge – easiest to evaluate
– volunteer attitudes motivation satisfaction
– scientific outcomes adaptive management
Behaviour change is often a goal but nobody knows how to evaluate it.
In response she setup the DEVISE research project trying to develop an evaluation toolkit for Citizen Science. Her learning framework has these elements:
– Science identity
– Inters in science
– Motivation
– Knowledge of nature of science
– Skills of science enquiry
– Environmental stewardship behaviours
She considers that self efficacy. People confidence to be able to make these changes is a very important and possible thing to evaluate, even if you can’t directly measure the changes!
My personal Comment/Question:
Why is science being defined in such a way that it excluded people normal everyday lives? Do we not go through life acquiring knowledge that is the basis of all shared public knowledge?
Extreme Citizen Science blog 