Motivations, learning and creativity in online citizen science

Abstract

Online citizen science projects have demonstrated their usefulness for research, however little is known about the potential benefits for volunteers. We conducted 39 interviews (28 volunteers, 11 researchers) to gain a greater understanding of volunteers' motivations, learning and creativity (MLC). In our MLC model we explain that participating and progressing in a project community provides volunteers with many indirect opportunities for learning and creativity. The more aspects that volunteers are involved in, the more likely they are to sustain their participation in the project. These results have implications for the design and management of online citizen science projects. It is important to provide users with tools to communicate in order to supporting social learning, community building and sharing. AbstractCitizen science; Informal learning; Public engagement with science and technology Keywords

Not so passive: engagement and learning in Volunteer Computing projects

“…Correlating these data with the participation paths of the subjects in the project, the researchers conclude that improvement in scientific literacy is related to participation in the social components of the program but not to the amount of contributed data. This conclusion is strongly supported by our own data as well, as will become clear later in this paper and as already described in our other publications (Kloetzer et al, 2013;Jennett et al, 2016).…”

“…As projects struggle to find, train and retain efficient volunteers, any dimension supporting the strong and long-term engagement of volunteers should be encouraged. According to our recent research (see Jennett et al, 2016), learning is one of these important dimensions: although learning is expressed as a reason to participate for a minority of participants (between 20% and 1/3 of the volunteers, depending on the projects), it becomes, with experience and engagement within a community of volunteers, a driver of continuous participation.…”

Is Virtual Citizen Science A Game?

“…Jennett et al [2016] note that the factors governing initial attraction to citizen science almost exclusively pertain to scientific research -interests in science, curiosity about research and a desire to contribute to research. Nevertheless, continued interest in projects is a significant factor influencing long-term player engagement [Jennett et al 2016] and our findings suggest that it is in this area that games have a significant influence.…”

“…This echoes the tensions described by Prestopnik and Tang [2015] and Eveleigh et al [2013], among others, in terms of the impact of framing 'serious' citizen science tasks as games. While games frame their tasks through the awarding of extrinsic factors for participation, non-games instead support intrinsic motivations by reinforcing players' intrinsic interests through learning and feedback [Jennett et al 2016]. There are, however different degrees of such framing and it should be noted, that not describing the project as a game does not mean that it won't include any game elements at all.…”

Creativity in Citizen Cyberscience

“…In an earlier study, we interviewed 39 volunteers across 15 different citizen cyberscience projects (Jennett et al, 2016). Our analysis revealed that the majority of creative products were communityrelated (see Figure 1).…”