Patterns of Participation and Motivation in Folding@home: The Contribution of Hardware Enthusiasts and Overclockers

Folding@home is a distributed computing project in which participants run protein folding simulations on their computers. Participants complete work units and are awarded points for their contribution. An investigation into motivations to participate and patterns of participation revealed the significant contribution of a sub-community composed of individuals who custom-build computers to maximise their processing power. These individuals, known as “overclockers” or “hardware enthusiasts,” use distributed computing projects such as Folding@home to benchmark their modified computers and to compete with one another to see who can process the greatest number of project work units. Many are initially drawn to the project to learn about computer hardware from other overclockers and to compete for points. However, once they learn more about the scientific outputs of Folding@home, some participants become more motivated by the desire to contribute to scientific research. Overclockers form numerous online communities where members collaborate and help each other maximise their computing output. They invest heavily in their computers and process the majority of Folding@home’s simulations, thus providing an invaluable (and free) resource

Learning by volunteer computing, thinking and gaming: What and how are volunteers learning by participating in Virtual Citizen Science?

Citizen Science (CS) refers to a form of research collaboration that engages volunteers without formal scientific training in contributing to empirical scientific projects. Virtual Citizen Science (VCS) projects engage participants in online tasks. VCS has demonstrated its usefulness for research, however little is known about its learning potential for volunteers. This paper reports on research exploring the learning outcomes and processes in VCS. In order to identify different kinds of learning, 32 exploratory interviews of volunteers were conducted in three different VCS projects. We found six main learning outcomes related to different participants' activities in the project. Volunteers learn on four dimensions that are directly related to the scope of the VCS project: they learn at the task/game level, acquire pattern recognition skills, on-topic content knowledge, and improve their scientific literacy. Thanks to indirect opportunities of VCS projects, volunteers learn on two additional dimensions: off topic knowledge and skills, and personal development. Activities through which volunteers learn can be categorized in two levels: at a micro (task/game) level that is direct participation to the task, and at a macro level, i.e. use of project documentation, personal research on the Internet, and practicing specific roles in project communities. Both types are influenced by interactions with others in chat or forums. Most learning happens to be informal, unstructured and social. Volunteers do not only learn from others by interacting with scientists and their peers, but also by working for others: they gain knowledge, new status and skills by acting as active participants, moderators, editors, translators, community managers, etc. in a project community. This research highlights these informal and social aspects in adult learning and science education and also stresses the importance for learning through the indirect opportunities provided by the project: the main one being the opportunity to participate and progress in a project community, according to one's tastes and skills

Understanding citizen science and environmental monitoring: final report on behalf of UK Environmental Observation Framework

Citizen science can broadly be defined as the involvement of volunteers in science. Over the past decade there has been a rapid increase in the number of citizen science initiatives. The breadth of environmental-based citizen science is immense. Citizen scientists have surveyed for and monitored a broad range of taxa, and also contributed data on weather and habitats reflecting an increase in engagement with a diverse range of observational science. Citizen science has taken many varied approaches from citizen-led (co-created) projects with local community groups to, more commonly, scientist-led mass participation initiatives that are open to all sectors of society. Citizen science provides an indispensable means of combining environmental research with environmental education and wildlife recording. Here we provide a synthesis of extant citizen science projects using a novel cross-cutting approach to objectively assess understanding of citizen science and environmental monitoring including: 1. Brief overview of knowledge on the motivations of volunteers. 2. Semi-systematic review of environmental citizen science projects in order to understand the variety of extant citizen science projects. 3. Collation of detailed case studies on a selection of projects to complement the semi-systematic review. 4. Structured interviews with users of citizen science and environmental monitoring data focussing on policy, in order to more fully understand how citizen science can fit into policy needs. 5. Review of technology in citizen science and an exploration of future opportunities

Stakeholder engagement in water governance as social learning: lessons from practice

The OECD Principles on Water Governance set out various requirements for stakeholder engagement. Coupled with conceptualizations of social learning, this article asks how we define and enact stakeholder engagement and explores the actual practice of engagement of stakeholders in three fields of water governance. The results suggest that a key consideration is the purpose of the stakeholder engagement, requiring consideration of its ethics, process, roles and expected outcomes. While facilitators cannot be held accountable if stakeholder engagement ‘fails’ in terms of social learning, they are responsible for ensuring that the enabling conditions for social learning are met

Exploring Engagement Characteristics and Behaviours of Environmental Volunteers

Environmental volunteering and environmental citizen science projects both have a pivotal role in civic participation. However, one of the common challenges is recruiting and retaining an adequate level of participant engagement to ensure the sustainability of these projects. Thus, understanding patterns of participation is fundamental to both types of projects. This study uses and builds on existing quantitative approaches used to characterise the nature of volunteer engagement in online citizen science projects, to see whether similar participatory patterns exist in offline environmental volunteering projects. The study uses activity records of environmental volunteers from a UK environmental charity “The Conservation Volunteers,” and focuses on three characteristics linked to engagement: longevity, frequency, and distance travelled. Findings show differences in engagement patterns and contributor activity between the three UK regions of Greater London, Greater Manchester, and Yorkshire. Cluster analysis revealed three main types of volunteer engagement profiles which are similar in scale across all regions, namely participants can be grouped into “One-Session,” “Short-Term,” and “Long-Term” volunteer. Of these, the “One-Session” volunteer accounted for the largest group of volunteers