Improve Your Project Communications by Thinking Like a Scientist

Improve Your Project Communications by Thinking Like a Scientist

Participatory science project leaders wear a lot of hats. And one of the most underappreciated, and frustrating to some, roles is that of a communicator. You’re expected to maintain a social media presence, send newsletters, and overall build an engaged community of participants — all on the side while you’re doing the job of actually running your project.  A lot of people who put effort into their communications approach them as a task-based chore: Post your post, send your email, check the boxes. But far fewer have a good sense of whether checking these boxes is actually accomplishing anything.  The…
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Four Highlights from the NASA Cit Sci Leaders Series

Four Highlights from the NASA Cit Sci Leaders Series

Over my 12 month fellowship, I had the opportunity to watch all 35 hours of event recordings on the NASA Cit Sci Leaders series. For my final post as AAPS fellow, I want to share four highlights from the series that shaped how I approach my own project, to inspire you to explore the series and see what resonates most with you and your project.  Highlight 1: Equity isn’t an outcome, it’s part of project design Watch ????: Keynote, Raj Pandya Keynote: Discovery, Learning, Equity and Action: Unleashing the Power of Citizen Science Of all the great things Dr. Raj…
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3 Questions that Changed How I think About Volunteers/Audience

3 Questions that Changed How I think About Volunteers/Audience

https://youtu.be/4t_hrjinR3w In my time as the NASA Cit Sci Leaders series fellow, I’ve come across advice, lessons, and tools that have already helped improve the quality of our science and my understanding of our audience. In this video, I’m sharing a review of one of the tools I’ve found most useful as a researcher and project leader: the Anticipated Volunteers Reflection Tool.  This resource helps project leaders think intentionally about who they’re trying to engage, where to find them, what they need, and what motivates them. Understanding and connecting with your audience is about more than just sharing information, it’s…
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Lessons from Projects that have Cultivated Advanced Participation

Lessons from Projects that have Cultivated Advanced Participation

What makes volunteers feel empowered and motivated to bring their own ideas and expertise to the table? How do project leaders support and nurture extraordinary efforts, contributions, interests, or collaborations from volunteers? One of the most exciting aspects of citizen science is how often volunteers go far beyond what’s expected of them, making unique contributions that significantly impact the project and contribute to scientific discovery in creative ways. Through the NASA Citizen Science Leaders series, I’ve been learning how project leaders intentionally create the conditions that empower these extraordinary contributions. This post shares strategies and reflections from these conversations. My…
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Resources Explained: Design Thinking Tools

Resources Explained: Design Thinking Tools

Back in 2021, we produced a series of events for NASA citizen science project leaders focused on citizen science project design, and more specifically, website design. NASA, by formal policy, uses citizen science as a research method and holds citizen science projects to the same standards as any other research (SPD-33). Project teams are funded to produce scientific results, which as any seasoned participatory science professional will tell you, requires a high quality volunteer experience. The purpose of our series was to provide support to teams of scientists to help them be efficient and successful at these challenges.  In addition…
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Building community in a citizen science project: fostering social interaction for meaningful engagement 

Building community in a citizen science project: fostering social interaction for meaningful engagement 

When we first launched Redshift Wrangler, I focused on making the science understandable and engaging, but what I hadn’t anticipated was how important social interactions would be in keeping volunteers engaged. What kept people coming back was a sense of community, and one of the most important ways I’ve learned to foster community on our project is by making communication a two-way street. I started to realize this when I saw that volunteers who posted on our Talk boards or joined our office hours were more likely to stick with the project longer. When I responded to questions quickly and…
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Designing for social interaction: reflections from a citizen science project leader

Designing for social interaction: reflections from a citizen science project leader

If I could go back to the beginning of Redshift Wrangler, I would tell myself to follow Jennifer Shirk’s advice from the CitSci2020: Dive Into Project Design series webinar: keep your goals front and center, and don’t assume what will or won’t be valuable to someone else. When we first launched the project, I was focused on making the light from distant galaxies easier to explore and interpret for a broad audience, and I thought our biggest challenge would be convincing anyone to look at our data. I quickly realized that interest in our science wasn’t an issue, what influenced…
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