Science Learning via Participation in Online Citizen Science

TL;DR

This study shows that active participation in online citizen science projects enhances volunteers' science content knowledge, as evidenced by improved quiz performance, indicating effective learning through engagement.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that participation in online citizen science projects leads to increased science content knowledge among volunteers.

Findings

Active volunteers perform better on science quizzes.

Participation correlates with increased science content knowledge.

Engagement in citizen science fosters learning of scientific content.

Abstract

We investigate the development of scientific content knowledge of volunteers participating in online citizen science projects in the Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org), including the astronomy projects Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org) and Planet Hunters (www.planethunters.org). We use econometric methods to test how measures of project participation relate to success in a science quiz, controlling for factors known to correlate with scientific knowledge. Citizen scientists believe they are learning about both the content and processes of science through their participation. Won't don't directly test the latter, but we find evidence to support the former - that more actively engaged participants perform better in a project-specific science knowledge quiz, even after controlling for their general science knowledge. We interpret this as evidence of learning of science content inspired by participation in online citizen science.