Tomorrow’s World nQuire: young people’s requirements for engaging with inquiry-led, civic engagement technologies

Citizen inquiry describes the learning benefits to people who engage actively in inquiry-led investigations. The Tomorrow’s world nQuire project, a collaboration between The Open University and the BBC in the UK, utilises the citizen inquiry paradigm to design an online platform to support large-scale public experiments, linked to TV or radio programmes. Scaffolding the investigations has been a challenging task, exploiting technology affordances that integrate guidance for inquiry-led activities and mass collaborative participation. The aim of this study is to examine the usability of an early version of the platform and understand, in particular, how young people aged 16 to 18 in particular perceive technologies that support inquiry-led social science investigations. Outcomes revealed that there is a preference by the majority of the young participants to use mobile devices for accessing the platform. This finding emphasises the importance of mobilised learning and mobile-friendly design for engaging teenagers with inquiry-led activities

Citizen Inquiry: Engaging Citizens in Online Communities of Scientific Inquiries

Citizen Inquiry has been proposed as an informal science learning approach to enable widespread involvement in science and empower citizens with reasoning and problem-solving skills used by scientists. It combines aspects from citizen science and inquiry-based learning, producing science learning experiences within distributed communities of interest. A central challenge for Citizen Inquiry is to involve citizens in planning and implementing their own investigations, supported and guided by online systems and tools within an inquiry environment, while collaborating with science experts and non-experts. This thesis explores how to create an active and sustainable online community for citizens to engage in scientific investigations. To this end, it investigates the design of online communities, recruitment and retaining of members, factors that engage or disengage members from the community, and whether and how members learn throughout their participation. The intervention comprises two iterations of Citizen Inquiry communities: ‘Inquiring Rock Hunters’ and ‘Weather-it’. The communities were accommodated by the nQuire platform and the nQuire-it toolkit, respectively, software designed and structured to support collaborative personally-meaningful inquiry learning. The findings of this research are explained through an analysis that compared the two design studies with previous research on citizen participation projects and online communities. Results highlight the importance of frequent project communication, multiple ways of participation, software usability, and interaction and collaboration between the members, while indicating disengagement factors such as lack of time, interest and confidence. Different categories of learning are identified (activity, on-topic and community), emphasizing the understanding of inquiry activities as part of a complete scientific process and the balance between fun and learning. The thesis concludes with design considerations for the creation of future Citizen Inquiry and other citizen participation communities

A design-based study of Citizen Inquiry for geology

Citizen Inquiry forms a new method of informal science learning and aims to enable the engagement of citizens in online scientific investigations. Citizen Inquiry combines aspects from Citizen Science and Inquiry-based learning and is implemented through a community of practice where people having a shared interest interact and exchange knowledge and methods supported and guided by online systems and tools within a web-based inquiry environment. To explore the potential of Citizen Inquiry, a series of design-based studies will be developed to help in understanding and improving the engagement of citizens in online scientific investigation. “Inquiring Rock Hunters” is the first design-study of Citizen Inquiry, applied to Geology, and it explores the experience of participants with inquiries, other participants and tools

Design Guidelines for Sensor-based Mobile Learning Applications

We present five design guidelines that we have developed from issues identified during our usability evaluations in a sensor-based citizen inquiry project. These have been compiled from existing literature, and after receiving feedback on use of the mobile application from participants through forum comments and survey responses, statistical analysis of the sensor measurements, and the researchers' observation and reflection. These guidelines aim to assist Technology-enhanced Learning (TEL) researchers and teachers who develop, modify or use mobile apps for their projects and lessons

Online Citizen Science: A Systematic Review of Effects on Learning and Scientific Literacy

Participation in online citizen science is increasingly popular, yet studies that examine the impact on participants’ learning are limited. The aims of this paper are to identify the learning impact on volunteers who participate in online citizen science projects and to explore the methods used to study the impact. The ten empirical studies, examined in this systematic review, report learning impacts on citizens’ attitudes towards science, on their understanding of the nature of science, on topic-specific knowledge, on science knowledge, and on generic knowledge. These impacts were measured using self-reports, content analysis of contributed data and of forum posts, accuracy checks of contributed data, science and project-specific quizzes, and instruments for measuring scientific attitudes and beliefs. The findings highlight that certain technological affordances in online citizen science projects can cultivate citizens’ knowledge and skills, and they point to unexplored areas, including the lack of experimental and long-term studies, and studies in formal education settings

Design processes of a citizen inquiry community

As with other online communities, it is important to design elements of citizen inquiry projects that will attract and engage members. This chapter describes the process of designing an online community for citizen inquiry. It builds on design principles of inquiry learning, citizen inquiry and other online communities. The ‘Weather-it’ citizen inquiry community is intended to engage and support people in initiating and joining sustainable citizen-led investigations. The findings indicate some successful mechanisms for the design of effective and sustainable citizen inquiry communities and ways to sustain them

Weather-it: evolution of an online community for citizen inquiry

While Citizen Science projects involve people in passive or active project tasks, Citizen Inquiry offers the opportunity for deeper involvement through initiating and facilitating science investigations. This study aims to explore the creation and evolution of Weather-it, a Citizen Inquiry online community hosted by the nQuire-it platform. Weather-it enables people to create and maintain their own weather missions (investigations), to which other people can contribute. The evolution of Weather-it community is explored through social network graphs of Weather-it members and their interactions. Information regarding other aspects of the community such as the type of members, their recruitment and motivations, and the identity and sustainability of the community, is collected through a survey comprising open and closed-ended questions. The results indicate differences in these community engagement aspects between Citizen Science and Citizen Inquiry projects, providing insight into the behaviour of people in projects that require more active involvement throughout the scientific investigations

Science learning in online communities of scientific investigations: evidence and suggestions

This study is looking at how citizens engage with scientific investigations and it comprises two citizen inquiry communities: ‘Inquiring Rock Hunters’ and ‘Weather-it’. The communities originated from the idea of having citizens act as scientists. Therefore, the citizens were allowed and supported to create and facilitate investigations in collaboration with experts and based on their experience of everyday-life science. The following science learning aspects were investigated: type of learning taking place within the community, inquiry behaviour and patterns, scientific vocabulary and self-reported knowledge. Reflection on the main findings led to essential design suggestions that aim to facilitate the understanding of inquiry activities as part of a complete scientific process; balance the enjoyable parts of the projects with gains in scientific literacy; improve transferrable skills; and involve experts in conveying quality science topic culture and learning

From face-to-face environments to distance learning universities: the transition period of first-year students

[EN] The sudden transition from face-to-face into distance learning activities in higher education during the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to improve student induction and transition into distance learning settings. This study explores the experiences of first-year students at a distance learning university. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with students, aged 18-19, who transitioned from a face-to-face environment (school, college or another university) to distance-learning higher education. Thematic analysis yielded themes related to students’ early perceptions on distance-learning, experiences with learning and assessment, and social interactions. Noteworthy findings include students’ early misconceptions of distance-learning, distance-learning as a shelter for students with mental health issues, views on hybrid learning and continuous assessment, and approaches to socialising. Insights from this study have implications for how universities with new and existing distance learning practices design their induction and support programmes to facilitate student transition and enhance the first-year student experience.Tessarolo, F.; Aristeidou, M.; Coughlan, E. (2022). From face-to-face environments to distance learning universities: the transition period of first-year students. En 8th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'22). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 917-924. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd22.2022.1453191792

Inquiring Rock Hunters

The Inquiring Rock Hunters project is an example of Citizen Inquiry. Adult citizens designed and ran their own investigations in geology, through the online platform called nQuire, while collaborating with scientists. Analysis of the investigations shows patterns of collaboration and mentoring between novice, intermediate and expert geologists, however further work is needed to create a self-sustaining community of inquiry