This is the last in a series of three posters that we’re presenting today at the AAS meeting in Washington, D.C.

Abstract

The CosmoQuest Virtual Research Facility provides a place for scientists to recruit people to aid in their science projects via citizen science. Just as students need training to be effective researchers, so do citizen scientists, but their needs are different. In this presentation, we present the results of surveys of members of the CosmoQuest community, including both citizen scientists and educators using citizen science in their classrooms. For all members of the community, we investigated the types of projects that respondents enjoyed doing, the level of difficulty they were willing to engage in, and the amount of time they spent doing citizen science projects. We also investigated what other science-related activities respondents were engaged in, other opportunities they were interested in, and what support and resources they needed to be successful in completing projects. For educators, we investigated the types of projects they wanted to engage in with their students, the ideal length of time for citizen science projects to be used in their classrooms, and the resources they needed to be able to engage students in citizen science projects effectively.

By:  Sanlyn Buxner, Maya Bakerman, Pamela Gay, Alison Reiheld

You can download the entire poster as a PDF here.