Last month, I joined a cohort of faculty in the Chesapeake Project, which provides UMD faculty with support for incorporating sustainability into courses across the university. We were led through a whirlwind tour of sustainability: definitions, visions, facilities, programs, issue areas, and teaching tools. It worked. Not that I needed much encouragement, but I now have specific ideas for integrating sustainability into my courses this fall. For example, in my usual coverage of organizational culture, I’m planning to replace current lecture examples of communicating social norms from selections that target moderate drinking, to sustainability-themed norms with the “Terps ♥︎ the tap” and “Terps leave small footprints” campaigns. For the same lesson, the in-class activity was previously about planning for organizational culture change at NASA after the Challenger disaster. Instead, I’ll have students design a “greening the firm” culture change plan. It requires the same kind of problem-solving, and I suspect it will also be uplifting for students to identify concrete ways that they too could leverage their positions and skills to support sustainability. I’ve also decided that the lesson on “maintenance” will become “maintenance and sustainability”. The in-class activity might be something to do with designing an IT system for cradle-to-cradle product management, such as those of Patagonia and Nike. The larger themes of maintenance and sustainability are often-neglected aspects of the information lifecycle that are important in practice, and I think the students will benefit from the exposure. All in all, it was a cathartic experience. The Chesapeake Project gave me the tools and provocation to bring sustainability into my classes, and ideas for expanding sustainability efforts in...
Citizen science is clearly an idea whose time has come; I’ll be appearing on the Diane Rehm Show to discuss citizen science for the Environmental Outlook show on May 5. For those tuning in after the fact, the show will be archived online. Obviously, this is an amazing opportunity to share my passion for citizen science with (ulp!) 6-7 million listeners across the nation. I’ll be in the studio with Sharman Apt Russell, author of “Diary of a Citizen Scientist”, with call-in discussion from David Bonter of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Liz MacDonald of NASA and Aurorasaurus. I actually know David and Liz quite well–the citizen science world is small! Sharman and I also crossed paths at a conference a couple of years back, and I’m devouring her delightfully articulate book at the moment. It reminds me so much of my own dissertation fieldwork, studiously learning everything I could to identify birds and coming to understand the things I studied in so much more detail than I had previously imagined they could possess. I’m looking forward to the discussion with these fantastic panelists, and excited about the chance to talk about citizen science’s recent growth, achievements, and...
On May 5, I’ll be speaking at the DC Science Café on “the power of citizen science”, appearing on a panel with author Sharman Apt Russell and Aurorasaurus project director Liz MacDonald. It’s an exciting opportunity to talk about my research with the public! The challenge, of course, is that my usual audiences are 1) other academics, 2) grad students, and 3) public sector staff with substantial background in science. In other words, not the general public! There’s so much I could say about citizen science that it’s hard to know where to start. Further, it sort of sounds like slides aren’t the usual choice–and I can’t really recall the last time I did a talk without slides. So this is an interesting challenge, especially given that it’s the end of the semester and I’ve got a lot of other big events on the calendar for that week! The event is 6:30-8:30 PM at Busboys & Poets at K and 5th (in DC). I’m told that audience members should arrive early to get a seat, since their capacity is 150. The DC Science Café is a free monthly event organized by the DC Science Writers Association. I’ve heard of these events before, as a form of public engagement in science communication, but I’ve never attended one—and I certainly didn’t expect to be on stage for my first science café experience. It should be fun; come join the...
How does a scientist know whether an available data set can support their work? This study examines how researchers from different disciplines and practical contexts (e.g., graduate students, faculty researchers, federal research scientists) use information about the sources and analysis of data, also known as provenance, when presented with indicators in an online system, addressing the research question: Can coupling climate-related indicators with data provenance support scientific innovation and science translation? This study draws on web credibility research as well as boundary object theory, which focuses on the role of artifacts (such as images) in translation and communication across the boundaries of social groups, as a theoretical lens to inform and direct our inquiry. In this pilot study, we are examining the way that such artifacts can support innovation and translation in the National Climate Indicator System (NCIS). Through a multi-stage research design, we hope to discover principles for optimizing the presentation of data for scientific advancements and translation. Packaging an integrated data product (indicators) with its provenance seems a valuable strategy for improving the ability of researchers to creatively consider the utility of data and information from other domains for use in their own work. This research is a collaboration with Dr. Melissa Kenney of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, supported by a seed grant from the UMD ADVANCE Program for Inclusive Excellence (NSF award HRD...
In collaboration with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), we are testing evaluation tools designed to establish contextually-appropriate means of evaluating scientific productivity. Due to the diversity of goals and practices, measuring science outcomes in citizen science projects requires a holistic approach, so we are developing evaluation and planning procedures suited to application across a variety of contexts. At SERC, we can work with a diverse range of citizen science projects to improve the robustness and generalizability of a science outcomes inventory and planning toolkit that will be useful to the broader citizen science community as well. Citizen science can be considered both a methodology and a phenomenon; in this study, we focus on its methodological characteristics through the contextualized evaluation and planning process. As a phenomenon, we focus on understanding these projects’ evolutionary patterns and the impact of key decisions on project development, addressing these research questions: What are the typical stages of project development and longitudinal patterns of project evolution in citizen science projects? What events or conditions influence project management decisions in citizen science projects? How does structured evaluation of project outputs support project evolution and decision making? The products of this research will include improved citizen science project management and evaluation processes. We also anticipate new insights into project dynamics and resource requirements that can be used to establish reasonable, evidence-based resource allocations and performance expectations for local-to-regional field-based citizen science projects, supporting more effective project management and improved...
The Open Knowledge Lab studies infrastructures supporting open knowledge. We focus on citizen science and open data, which broaden access to scientific knowledge.
The Open Knowledge Lab studies infrastructures supporting open knowledge. We focus on citizen science and open data, which broaden access to scientific knowledge.