Challenges in VGI for scientific projects

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is a recent trend that has been successfully used in order to collect and share geographic information. This method is of interest for scientists who are in need of data and who want to get people involved in their cause. In this paper we discuss the challenges and opportunities that scientists may face when using the concept. An initial challenge is to find users who are willing to contribute. Second scientist must get these users to interact with the application and with each other. The final goal is to end up with high quality data that can be used for scientific research

Edera, ou De l'animation: traitement et proposition de mise en valeur d'un fonds d'archives de la Cinémathèque Suisse

La Cinémathèque Suisse est fortement sollicitée comme dépôt d’archives. Pourtant, ces dernières sont mal connues et mériteraient d’être mieux mises en valeur. Parmi les fonds d’archives qui attendent d’être traités, la Cinémathèque possède notamment le fonds que Bruno Edera, spécialiste en film d’animation, a versé à l’institution. Certains documents qui le composent étant susceptibles d’intéresser un large public, ce fonds d’archives constitue un bon exemple à utiliser pour élaborer une stratégie de diffusion d’archives à la Cinémathèque. Notre tâche a consisté à traiter et à conditionner le fonds Bruno Edera, puis à proposer une solution pour sa mise en valeur. Nous avons effectué pour cela un état des lieux des méthodes de diffusion d’archives les plus fréquemment utilisées,et les avons mises en exergue avec les spécificités du fonds et celles de la Cinémathèque. Enfin, nous avons élaboré une proposition basée principalement sur l’utilisation d’un logiciel de traitement d’archives, solution qui nous paraissait la plus adéquate à utiliser dans ce contexte. Ce mémoire décrit en outre les démarches que nous avons entreprises pourparvenir à cette solution. Il sert également de plan de classement et d’inventaire du fonds d’archives de Bruno Edera

Participants’ motivations to contribute to biodiversity citizen science projects

The public participation in scientific projects (citizen science) is significantly increasing specially with technology developments in recent years. Volunteers play an essential role in citizen science projects, therefore understanding their motivations, and understanding how to sustain them to keep contributing to the project are of utmost importance. This paper presents the analysis of volunteers’ characteristics and their motivations to contribute to a citizen science project, which aims at encouraging citizens to take action for biodiversity. The results from the online survey illustrate that people are more motivated by intrinsic nature-related motives rather than extrinsic motivations

Augmented reality technologies for biodiversity education ::a case study

Mobile technology is developing fast in recent years, and the price of mobile devices is dropping and becoming affordable for the majority of people. As a result, the use of smartphones and tablets is increasing at a rapid rate, even among children. Nowadays, in many countries, smartphones are being used at school as advanced teaching tools to motivate children to learn better. One of the recent examples is the utilization of Augmented Reality mobile applications for educational purposes. This paper is presenting an AR mobile application, which is encouraging children to learn about biodiversity. The application was evaluated during a field trip with 15 pupils of around 10 years of age, and the results illustrate the behavior of the pupils using the application, and the potential of the app to create a connection between the students and the nature. Moreover, analyzing the time the pupils spent on the application demonstrates a motivation among the pupils to find out about various species through a combination of an outdoor activity and a mobile application

Keys to successful scientific VGI projects

Scientific projects are increasingly using volunteered geographic information (VGI) in order to collect and validate geographic data. This concept relies on the three challenges that first of all users can be found and second be convinced to collaborate and contribute and that scientists finally are able to gather high quality data for their projects. In this paper these three challenges are discussed using the experience with three different research projects: Urbangene, Signalez-nous and BioSentiers