Abstract
Hundreds of thousands of undergraduates enroll in general education science courses to fulfill university core requirements. However, many of these lecture-based courses fail to foster high-level data literacy skills. This work details the design, implementation, and analysis of a new climate change-based classroom activity for college students that pairs data interpretation with participation in an online citizen science project called Floating Forests (http://floatingforests.org). We pilot tested our activity in introductory geoscience and biology courses at six universities (∼1,500 students) during the 2020–2021 academic year. Additionally, we developed and validated a survey to assess how engagement with our activity impacted students’ self-reported changes across four factors: (1) perceptions of the impacts of climate change, (2) data literacy self-efficacy, (3) beliefs about the value of citizen science, and (4) beliefs about science engagement. In a pre- to post-test comparison, students who utilized our activity in their courses showed statistically significant increases (p < 0.05) across all four factors. These results highlight the potential benefit of implementing data-driven, citizen science-based activities in introductory-level undergraduate courses.
Original language | English (US) |
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Journal | Journal of Geoscience Education |
DOIs | |
State | Accepted/In press - 2023 |
Keywords
- citizen science
- curriculum development
- data literacy
- higher education
- Student beliefs
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education
- General Earth and Planetary Sciences
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A citizen science approach to teaching climate change in introductory-level undergraduate general science courses
Rosenthal, I. S. (Creator), Simon, M. (Creator), Trouille, L. (Creator) & Byrnes, J. E. K. (Creator), Taylor & Francis, 2024
DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24970172, https://tandf.figshare.com/articles/dataset/A_citizen_science_approach_to_teaching_climate_change_in_introductory-level_undergraduate_general_science_courses/24970172
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A citizen science approach to teaching climate change in introductory-level undergraduate general science courses
Rosenthal, I. S. (Creator), Simon, M. (Creator), Trouille, L. (Creator) & Byrnes, J. E. K. (Creator), Taylor & Francis, 2024
DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24970172.v1, https://tandf.figshare.com/articles/dataset/A_citizen_science_approach_to_teaching_climate_change_in_introductory-level_undergraduate_general_science_courses/24970172/1
Dataset