Probing the pandemic with citizen science

This ISLS poster from the MindHive project describes a classroom pilot study of our citizen science platform, on which high school students generated brain and behavior research studies on their questions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vasudevan, V., Matuk, C., Bumbacher, E., Davidesco, I.,  Dikker, S., Sadhukha, S., Chaloner, K.,  Burgas, K., Martin, R. & Shevchenko, Y. (2021). Students doing citizen science on an unfolding pandemic. In, Proceedings of the International Society for the Learning Sciences Conference, pp. 975-976. Online. [Academia.edu] [ResearchGate]

Abstract

School-based science inquiry tends to focus on already answered questions. We describe how we used the COVID-19 pandemic in a high school citizen science unit for students to witness and engage in real-time science. High school students developed proposals to study questions about their experiences related to the pandemic. Teacher and student interviews and observations showed that this globally-relevant experience also offered a personally relevant context through which to understand the scientific process.