Increasing student engagement with citizen science

Abstract

Students actively engaged in their lessons will learn better. The current model of many science courses uses standard labs covering concepts that have been taught in the classroom. Students are doing experiments that have already been done before and already have an answer. They know it is not real. It is simply an assignment. This project implemented citizen science into the classroom. Students were given real projects and evaluated on their learning outcomes. The citizen science units were compared to standard teaching units. The data suggests a positive relationship between using citizen science as a teaching technique and student learning outcomes.