Choosing or Creating a Citizen Science Project

There are many types of biology projects on the Zooniverse platform, housed under both the “biology” and “nature” categories on the main project page. All specimen label transcription projects are found in the Notes from Nature section. The lesson described here is easily adapted to any herbarium transcription project. For additional herbarium projects, there are several other publicly-available digital transcription platforms around the world, including Australia and several in Europe: example 1, example 2, example 3 and example 4.

To create a new project on Zooniverse requires data that can be uploaded to the Zooniverse site and likely requires collaborating with a natural history museum or collection. The Zooniverse platform provides a detailed guide to building a project.

Prepare Lesson Materials and Introductory Mini-Lecture

Prior to the lesson’s start date, we upload (but do not publish for students) all relevant lesson information, documents and links to a separate page on the course Learning Management System (LMS) site (Figure 1). This page is visible to students only for the duration of the lesson.

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Two weeks before the lesson opens, we present an introductory mini-lecture in class. This mini-lecture briefly introduces natural history collections, digitization of specimens, and the objectives and workflow of the lesson (see Supporting File S1 for slides). The course syllabus contains a very brief mention of a “Beaty Biodiversity Project,” with a course grade percentage and no other details. Because this mini-lecture is the first-time students learn about the specific topic and activities of the lesson, it is important to provide some context and rationale—enough to pique students’ curiosity—while also remembering to avoid “over-explaining” the background materials as those readings are built into the lesson. We also stress the importance of accuracy and precision when generating herbarium specimen label data. Many students don’t initially realize these data “leave the classroom” (i.e., are not just another course assignment) and are actually read and used by collection curators and staff. In the class immediately before the lesson opens, we remind students of the upcoming lesson and to take seriously the quality of their transcriptions.

Student Workflow During Lesson

Students should complete the lesson activities in order (Figure 2), at their own pace during the two weeks the lesson is open. We ask students to post questions about the lesson to the course’s online discussion board. Using an online discussion board provides a searchable archive of questions answered by the instructor (or other students), which is helpful for students working independently outside of class, and also prevents the instructor from having to answer the same question repeatedly.

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Pre- and Post-Surveys

The pre-survey and post-survey are both administered using a survey tool (our institution uses Qualtrics); students access these surveys via links provided either in the slides containing the background reading or on the lesson page on the course LMS (Figure 1). We use the pre-survey to capture students’ knowledge about natural history collections before they complete the background reading; the post-survey allows us to see if these perspectives have shifted as a result of the lesson. It is therefore important for students to complete the pre-survey without looking up any additional information to answer the questions, and to take time to seriously reflect on the lesson as they complete the post-survey. Both surveys are provided in Supporting File S3. Students receive participation credit toward their lesson grade for completing each of the two surveys, which are evaluated according to the rubric provided in Supporting File S4.

Background Materials

We created a slide deck of detailed background information students need to know about natural history collections with an emphasis on plant herbaria: what an herbarium is, how plant specimens are collected and preserved, how collections are useful to science and society. We link to a selection of videos featuring collections from around the world and specific scientists who work with collections in diverse ways (see Supporting File S2 for video links). We instruct students to read and watch these background materials before beginning their worksheet activities.

Worksheets and Digital Transcriptions

Students complete the three worksheets (Supporting File S4) of this lesson, in sequence, after completing the pre survey and background readings. Worksheet 1 asks students to examine the seaweed Nereocystis luetkeana and take measurements from herbarium specimen images; a brief organismal introduction to Nereocystis luetkeana (common name: bull kelp or bullwhip kelp) and the specimen images are provided in the background materials. Worksheet 2 asks students to search for specimen records in the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria online database (note: there are many regional natural history collection portals, a list of many can be found here). A screenshot tutorial for navigating this database is provided to students in the background materials (Supporting File S2). Worksheet 3 provides the link to the Zooniverse transcription project (also found in the background materials and Course LMS) and asks students to complete four herbarium specimen digital transcriptions. We ask students to record on Worksheet 3 the accession numbers of their transcribed specimens as evidence that they completed this part of the lesson. Recording specimen accession numbers also provides students with a sense of accountability for the data quality of their transcriptions. Students submit digital copies of their three completed worksheets to our course management system and are evaluated according to the rubric provided in Supporting File S4.

Class Debrief

In the week following the end of the lesson, we hold a 10 minute debrief mini-lecture during class. The debrief is presented on two slides, with the first “results of the lesson” slide content changing from semester to semester depending on the course. Examples of what we have presented include: an interesting result from the aggregated pre- or post-survey data, a summary of the number of digital transcriptions completed by the class (only possible if you have access to or can collaborate with the organizers of the citizen science project), or a couple of the Nereocystis specimen images from Worksheet 1 used to stimulate a quick think-pair-share class discussion of the pros and cons of taking measurements using specimen images. The second slide of the debrief is our “going further” information for students who enjoyed the lesson and want resources for continued work with natural history collections or citizen science. An example of the debrief mini-lecture slides is provided in Supporting File S5.

Teaching Discussion

Versions of this lesson have occurred over seven semesters since 2018 with over 1200 students participating. The January–April 2020 semester included 564 students across three course sections (188, 187 and 189 students per section, respectively; the first two taught by the first author). Here we present 2020 survey and worksheet data from 415 students consenting to participate in the study under the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board certificates H20-00616 and H22-00831.

Lesson Timing

Each survey and worksheet activity captured the duration of time from when a student opened the activity to submission. On average, students took roughly 15 minutes for the pre-survey and 25 minutes for each of the three worksheets and post-survey. We did not formally ask students to report how long they spent reading the background information or completing the herbarium transcriptions; informal discussions with students suggested the time allotted was sufficient. All of this information was used to create the timing estimate provided in Table 1 and Supporting File S2.

Evidence of Effectiveness by Learning Objective

Our primary learning goal for this lesson is for students to be aware of and appreciate the value of natural history collections to science and society. Each of the more specific learning objectives was assessed using questions from the surveys or worksheets; to date, this lesson has not been included on any course test.

For LO-1: ‘Observe and measure physical variation within a single plant or seaweed species’, we asked students to identify two similarities and two differences among the six specimens of bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) provided on Worksheet 1 in Supporting File S2. We categorized responses from 100 randomly-selected worksheets for a total of 394 comments analyzed (a few students provided only similarities or differences, some students provided more than two comments per category). Almost a third of all comments, both for similarities and differences, were about the large photosynthetic blades or “leaves” (Table 2). Colour was the second most common feature described for both categories. With specimen differences, students more often described the overall shape or size rather than a specific feature (20% vs. 9% for specimen similarities).

Table 2. Summary of 98* student answers to the worksheet question “Describe — don’t just list — two features that are similar between all of your specimens and two features that are different between some of your specimens.” Specimens belonged to the bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana. The Feature column gives student terminology in quotations, formal terminology in parentheses. A total of 394 statements were analyzed: 205 similarities, 189 differences. *100 worksheets were analyzed but two were excluded: one student described features from only one specimen and the other compared a bull kelp to a conifer specimen.

Regarding physical variation, we asked students to measure the length of three specimens from the six provided. We summarized the first specimen measured from all completed worksheets (N = 410). Of these measurements, 56.3% (n = 231) could be reliably matched to a specimen: the student included the specimen label with their answer, or the length was within three centimeters of the average length as measured by the course instructor using the software FIJI (35), or the measurement was smaller than the shortest specimen / longer than the tallest specimen. Unfortunately, the original version of the worksheet did not ask for the specimen ID label, which made it difficult to match measurements to specimens after the lesson—this is why almost half of the measurements couldn’t be reliably assigned to a specimen. This oversight has been corrected in the included Supporting File S4. We summarized student measurements and the mean of three instructor measurements for the longest specimen (A; 75 students measured this specimen), shortest specimen (D; 78 student measurements) and a medium-length specimen (F; 38 student measurements) (Figure 3). In general, there was a wide range of measurements for each specimen, with the mean student answer close to the instructor’s (within 1 cm) for Specimens D and F but quite different (11 cm) for Specimen A. We were not surprised by the variation in Specimen A measurements because the stipe is coiled many times to fit onto the herbarium sheet, making it the most challenging to measure. Overall, we wanted students to think creatively about how to measure the length of a specimen from only a photograph and so gave suggestions but not explicit instructions. In some cases, students chose to measure specimen blades, stipe, etc., choosing a feature they felt could be measured on all specimens (which we encouraged). We also observed students using class discussion forum to share ideas for measuring specimens. Anecdotally, students reported using the scale bar + string or a ruler, or in a few cases, the software FIJI.

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For LO-2: ‘Describe important information listed on a natural history collection specimen label (specimen metadata)’, we showed students a pressed plant specimen image and asked them to identify what specific pieces of information should be included on the specimen’s herbarium label. Responses from both the pre-survey and post-survey were counted and categorized for 50 randomly-selected students (Figure 4). Overall, students listed 23% more items on the post-survey compared to the pre-survey (pre-survey = 171, post-survey = 216; e.g., “shape of the leaves,” “who collected it,” and “the date collected”). Almost half (48%) of the pre-survey response items were physical features of the plant visible in the provided image—colour of petals, number of leaves, etc.—with some mention of the date collected (9.9% of items) and scientific name (16.4% of items) but little to no mention of the collector, collection number, latitude and longitude or other common information included on an herbarium specimen label. By the post-survey, physical feature responses had greatly decreased (from 48% to 13.9% items) and shifted to more specific and common herbarium label collection information (Figure 4).

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For LO-3: ‘Reflect upon and appreciate the value of an herbarium and other natural history collections to science and society’, we asked students in the pre- and post-survey “On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = not worthwhile at all; 10 = extremely worthwhile), how worthwhile is it to preserve all three of these dogwood specimens in a biodiversity museum?”. Before the lesson, only 15% of students reported it was extremely worthwhile, after the lesson this had shifted to 55% (Figure 5). When asked to explain their rankings, in the pre-survey students talked about how it is “not necessary” or “not important” to keep more than one or two specimens of the same species, especially if they perceived the species to be common. On the post-survey, students frequently talked about the importance of capturing within-species variation and a record of species distributions through time (Table 3).

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Table 3. Example student explanations for their chosen rank to the survey question “On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = not worthwhile at all; 10 = extremely worthwhile), how worthwhile is it to preserve all three of these dogwood specimens in a biodiversity museum?”.

For LO-4: ‘Digitally transcribe herbarium specimen labels as a citizen scientist’, we asked students to self-report the accession number for their transcribed specimens’. We chose to do this on the “honor system” and not attempt to directly verify student work for two reasons: (i) as a Canadian institution adherent to provincial privacy laws in British Columbia, we could not ask students to provide their identifying information to a United States website without setting up student aliases, and (ii) in working with a third-party platform like Zooniverse, we could not guarantee the transcription data export would happen in time to assess as part of the student project grade. Regardless, instructors emphasize the importance of transcription data quality to the Beaty Museum during the lesson and Museum staff have indicated the data quality is high, suggesting that students are taking this aspect of the lesson seriously despite no direct impact to their project grade.

For LO-5: ‘Search a digital herbarium database and interpret specimen distribution results’, we asked students to search the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria database for all UBC Herbarium specimens for one of two provided species (see Worksheet 2 in Supporting File S4). Students were asked “What is the locality and state/province of the Northernmost and Southernmost specimen in the UBC Herbarium? Does the Herbarium’s collection represent the full range of this species?” (students were directed to the e-Flora BC website for species distribution information). We randomly sampled 50 students; of these 50% earned full credit by both correctly identifying the location of the two requested UBC specimens and correctly inferring that the UBC records did not represent the entire species range. Another 34% of students earned partial credit, most often by correctly identifying the UBC specimen locations but neglecting to answer the rest of the prompt. Finally, 16% of students provided incorrect answers. These results suggest the majority of students could successfully perform a specimen data search and correctly interpret the specimen distribution results.

Suggestions for Improvements to Lesson

Both a strength and a weakness of this lesson is that students complete all activities outside of class, at their own pace within a two-week timeframe. This independence allows great flexibility around students’ unique schedules, but likely means many students complete the activities without consulting their classmates. Perhaps this is a missed opportunity as the benefits of collaborative learning are well-established (36). While we do allow and even suggest students work in pairs, with each person submitting their own assignments, there is no explicit structure in the current design to facilitate productive discussion. We suggest several modifications for social interactions that are relatively easy to adapt. For example, when taking measurements of Nereocystis specimens, students could be prompted to use the course’s discussion forum to find other students who measured the same specimens, compare results, and discuss. A portion of the lesson grade could be allocated to participation and other activity discussions on the forum. Or students could first complete the generative worksheet questions independently (e.g., Worksheet 1: Brainstorm at least three reasons why you, as a researcher, may want or need to study museum collections of organisms instead of or alongside “live” or fresh specimens?), followed by contributing their answers to a class summary list. The list could be generated as an online poll (e.g., Google Form). Follow-up to the poll could be a low-stakes “dotmocracy” (voting with dots) activity during class, in-person or online, where students are shown a summarized list of common poll responses (but not frequencies) and add their “dots” next to their answers as a way to prompt retrieval and stimulate discussion.

Suggestions for Adaptation to Other Courses

We designed this lesson for a large (~200 students / instructor) lecture course with three content themes: Genetics, Evolution & Ecology. Because all of the activities are designed to be completed by students outside of class time, with no physical restrictions in terms of space (e.g., maximum attendees during a museum tour or lab), this lesson can be easily scaled to accommodate a very large or small course. For large courses of many hundreds of students, you should confirm the citizen science project or projects have enough tasks for your class size. For example, in this lesson students complete four transcriptions each; in March 2020 we had 564 students, meaning we needed a project or projects to accommodate 564 x 4 = 2256 transcriptions. In the case of the Notes from Nature section of Zooniverse, there are multiple similar projects running concurrently and each project gives an estimate of completion; students can be instructed to switch to a new project if another is completed. In general, regardless of class size, we advise having a back-up citizen science project in mind should any technical issues arise on the website (rare, but possible). It is also possible to adapt this lesson for use with other biodiversity data repositories. For this, we highly recommend exploring the Biodiversity Literacy in Undergraduate Education website, which has video tutorials for using the GBIF, iDigBio and even has a tutorial on applying backward design to biodiversity data lessons (37). If necessary, another possibility is to remove the transcription activity and instead have students create their own label for a provided specimen or even collect and label their own specimen for a class herbarium.

With respect to content knowledge, students complete this lesson during the Ecology theme in the last month of our introductory biology course. In the first two months we cover general concepts of genetic inheritance and variation (e.g., DNA, chromosomes, meiosis) and evolution (e.g., mechanisms: mutation, genetic drift, natural selection, gene flow). Roughly around the time the lesson is running, students are learning how abiotic and biotic factors can impact species’ ranges and population sizes, and how energy and nutrients flow through an ecosystem. Students often refer to evolutionary or ecological concepts during their post-survey reflection questions, which demonstrates that students are connecting the lesson to their course content. However, the focus here on natural history collections is a new topic for students at almost any level. We feel that the lesson itself does not require prior, post-secondary knowledge of genetics, evolution and ecology and can be adapted with little modification for high school students.

We designed this lesson to have a “value-added” component, i.e., something the students do goes beyond our classroom and directly contributes to the scientific community. We believe this part of the lesson is critical for student engagement. However, occasionally a student will comment on the post-survey or course evaluation that the transcription activity is “just free labor.” Strictly speaking, this perspective is true of any contribution made to citizen science. A possible adjustment could be to offer an alternative to the transcription activity if that is a concern about using this lesson.

Final Thoughts and Online Teaching

Many biologists have heard the quote, “In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught” (38) applied to biodiversity in the form of species, habitats and ecosystems. We believe this critical connection between knowing–loving–protecting applies just as well to the very institutions housing our records of biodiversity. How important is it for the average citizen to understand the importance of these collections? The National Museum of Brazil provides a tragic answer. In 2018, Brazil’s oldest scientific museum burned in a fire long-predicted as a consequence of repeated budgetary delays for desperately needed building renovations (39). Thousands of animal specimens, fossils, and Indigenous artifacts were destroyed, a devastating result of societal and political apathy toward natural history collections.

In addition to being generally unfamiliar with collections, it is our experience that most people are wholly unaware of how specimens inform us of life through time. These collections are, quite literally, our only direct window to generations past; it’s right there in the name: natural history collections. We may be able to collect contemporary samples through geographic space with relative ease but sampling biodiversity through time is only possible with natural history collections. And to maintain an understanding of species and community distributions through time, we need to continue adding to collections with contemporary samples—a difficult challenge when contemporary taxonomic expertise is in chronic decline (40).

In the post-COVID-19 university teaching landscape, most teachers and institutions have experienced the challenges of creating engaging, interactive online lessons. Our lesson pre-dates COVID-19, but addresses long-standing issues of access that are even more relevant now, such as geographic proximity to institutions housing collections, and limitations in the physical and staffing capacity to admit large groups into collection spaces. All of these barriers preventing large groups of students from participating in hands-on projects with natural history collections are either removed or reduced in a digital lesson.

Our intention with our lesson is to add to the growing suite of teaching activities (see Introduction for examples) that foster awareness of natural history collections and engender stewardship of the natural world. By creating a completely digital lesson, we’ve made our activities accessible to any students with access to a computer and the internet. We’ve explicitly included diverse examples of real people at various career levels with different uses for natural history collections in their jobs. Our hope in doing so is to show all students that biodiversity science is interesting and relevant to their lives.

Supporting Materials

• S1. Digitizing Biodiversity – Introductory Slides. Provides an example of how the lesson is introduced to students in class before they begin.

• S2. Digitizing Biodiversity – Background and Worksheet Slides. Provides students with (a) links to the pre-lesson and post-lesson surveys, (b) all necessary background materials (a selection of info slides and video links), (c) information needed to complete Worksheets 1 and 2 (Worksheet 1: herbarium specimen images, Worksheet 2: biodiversity database website navigation instructions), and (d) instructions and website link for completing digital transcriptions.

• S3. Digitizing Biodiversity – Pre-Lesson and Post-Lesson Surveys. Survey questions in an editable document for instructors.

• S4. Digitizing Biodiversity – Worksheets and Rubric. Worksheet questions in an editable document for instructors as well as a basic evaluation rubric.

• S5. Digitizing Biodiversity – Class Debrief Slides. Provides examples of how class can be debriefed after lesson is completed.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge that this lesson was developed and taught on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. We enthusiastically thank all of the UBC students who have participated in this lesson and are grateful to the UBC Biology Program and Beaty Biodiversity Museum (BBM) who are both extremely supportive of curricula that integrate the BBM with the UBC Biology Program. We thank Zarah Chaudhary for help with development of the pre and post-surveys as part of the UBC SoTL Seed program, Pam Kalas for providing feedback during creation and piloting of the worksheets and Amber Saudry for the original version of Supporting File S4.