CosmoQuest has a large presence at this year’s AGU in Washington, DC, from Dec 10-14, 2018. We have a number of posters and presentations by our team members. If you’re there, come by and check out what we’ve been doing!

Co-Investigator Evaluation Sanlyn Buxner will be presenting ED54A-01: Citizen Science Online Behaviors

When: Friday, 14 December 2018 16:15 – 16:21
Where: Marriott Marquis – Marquis 7-8

Description: In building online communities, project leaders need to take into consideration the motivations of participants, as well as the types of webpage interactions that are most common. Ideally, online programs will speak to participant motivations in ways that engender long-term engagement, while simultaneously developing an experience that is instantly welcoming and also prevents browsers from immediately bouncing off the page. With CosmoQuest.org, community members are invited to participate in programs that are social (e.g., chat rooms), scientific (e.g., citizen science projects), or educational (e.g., live streams of content). In this presentation, we examine the long-term engagement patterns at CosmoQuest.org, and study the efficacy of communications designed to encourage users to actively do science. We also study how the human-interactions components of social and education programs is able to attract long-term interactions.