the ECSA Working Groups
Forums
|
Sharing Best Practice and Building Capacity
This working group aims to promote high quality citizen science by sharing existing examples of good practice, developing practitioner guides and other documents to support the citizen science practitioner community, and bringing together all parties involved in citizen science to develop partnerships, share resources and experiences, and build capacity within the sector.
|
|
Projects, Data, Tools, and Technology
This group is trying to formalize a common understanding of interests in the Citizen Science data space, analyzing problems that Citizen Science projects face regarding data, such as interoperability, data reliability (e.g. how Citizen Science data can be trusted and plugged into environmental regulation and monitoring requirements from governments), privacy, or data intellectual property rights. To do so, the group is establishing collaborations with other technical organizations (such as the Open Geospatial Consortium –OGC-) or other Citizen Science Associations (CSA, ACSA).
|
|
Policy, Strategy, Governance and Partnerships
This working group has the aim of informing on and advocating for the value of Citizen Science for achieving policy goals such as understanding and enriching the environment, dealing with the effects of climate change, enhancing the public’s relationships with research and with the natural world. It seeks to promote the benefits and impacts of Citizen Science to policymakers and those who influence them, to collect case studies and research evidence about policy outcomes of Citizen Science activities, as well as to represent policy-related goals and achievements to ECSA’s members and governance structures.
|
|
Learning and Education in Citizen Science
Tasks:
Support, research, and evaluate learning and education in CS.
Research learning in CS
Develop educational opportunities in CS
Assist schools in using CS in the classroom
Develop tools to evaluate outcomes
CS in Education
The goals of this Working Group have been to:
Describe opportunities for volunteer learning, including in institutional settings like schools and museums.
Support teachers and project teams in providing educational opportunities using CS.
Build a network of teachers using CS in classrooms.
Develop an evaluation strategy and tools for learning in CS.
|
|
Citizen Science and Open Science
The adoption of open science approaches and policies can benefit citizen science by increasing its visibility and opportunities for collaboration, ensuring data persistence, and securing its legacies and impacts in scientific research and policy. At the same time, citizen science is an approach to make research in its many facets more participatory. Hence, this working group will seek to:
* Explore interrelations between Citizen Science and Open Science
* Foster exchange of experience and gathering of good practice at the intersections between Citizen Science and Open Science
* Channel opportunities for the CS community toward engaging in regional policy processes on how Citizen Science is addressed as part of Open Science, in cooperation with policy engagement work such as DITOs
* Help reduce technical, legal and other barriers that keep ECSA members and their partners from adopting open science policies and approaches that maximize the long-term impact of their programmes
|
|
BioBlitzes
A BioBlitz is an event in which members of the public and scientists meet in a delimited area and defined time period to record as many species as possible. By working together in an informal environment, while sharing expertise and collecting valuable scientific data, it is possible to bridge the gap between scientists and citizens. As such, BioBlitzes can be effective strategies to promote citizen science to the public and beyond. This Task & Finish group aims to connect people, communities, and organisations involved and interested in the organisation of BioBlitz events, to facilitate the sharing of good practice and to build capacity for this type of event across Europe. The Task & Finish Group has been established under the Sharing Best Practice and Building Capacity Working Group. |
|
Global Mosquito Alert
In Global Mosquito Alert, key citizen science mosquito monitoring initiatives agreed to work together to enable members of the public to join scientists to understand the spread of mosquito species capable of carrying these critical diseases and to provide information to help health professional and citizens to manage the associated risks. The group agreed to share current approaches to monitor breeding sites, and to measure the nuisance value of the citizen mosquito experience to support health risk management. It was also agreed to pool knowledge and experience on citizen science programmes to monitor biodiversity of mosquito species using the latest DNA identification techniques. The vision of Global Mosquito Alert is: “A shared, coordinated platform to leverage citizen science for the global surveillance and control of disease-carrying mosquitos, including the species that bear: Yellow fever, Chikungunya, dengue, Zika, malaria, and West Nile virus. Global Mosquito Alert will be an open, common e-infrastructure, platform and protocol that may be augmented with modular components and implemented on a range of scales to meet local and global research and management needs.” |
|
Air Quality
The vision of the WG is to support citizen science communities working on air quality across Europe to become mobilized and learn from each other's experiences. From 2019, we are organizing an annual "European Clean Air Day" (https://cleanairday.eu), engaging citizens in creating a collaborative pan-European air quality map.
|
|
Empowerment, Inclusiveness, Equity
We work with organisers of projects in Citizen Science and Community-Based Research to co-create resources and facilitate exchange on inclusiveness, equity and empowerment in participatory research. The overall aim is that that more people from more diverse backgrounds can participate in such participatory research activities, shape them according to their wishes and generate impacts that address their needs. |
|
Citizen Science Networks
The first goal of the Working Group on Citizen Science Networks is to frame transparent criteria that help networks to decide, in a transparent and impartial way, if a project should be listed as citizen science on their online platforms or not. This will facilitate the exchange of projects between networks and make projects more comparable.
|
|
Citizen science for health
This is a new ECSA working group, formed in 2020. The process principles of this working group are grounded in the dynamics of a community of practice: (1) Those who wish to bring an issue further, convene and prepare a session through the working group. (2) The working group management establishes a simple rhythm of online meetings. (3) The working group will operate a newsflash to update members on activities and news. (4) The working group will establish a core team to lead it, which will include at least one researcher and one citizen. Please also see our report on the ECSA 2020 session on citizen science and health. |
|
Citizen science and universities
The purpose of this working group is to advocate and support the embedding of citizen science activities at the university level, both for research and education purposes. We hope to support universities in carrying out citizen science research projects by:
|
|
Storytelling and other arts
Stories can activate people and invite them to be protagonists of the changes they want. And there are so many stories in the universe of citizen science. Arguments and facts are often not effective ways to get people to listen and connect. However, we can weave them into stories and make communication more effective. The purpose of this working group is to explore and gain knowledge and confidence in the way stories are an ally in science communication, specifically in citizen science. |