Engaging in the process of science using the FieldScope community and citizen science platform

By Jessica R. Bean, Ph.D., UC Berkeley. This blog is part of the Afterschool Alliance's Collective for Youth Empowerment in STEM & Society (CYESS) initiative. This series of blogs highlights examples of programs working at the  intersection of STEM and civic engagement. We are excited to showcase  the systemic change young people can make in their communities when  their afterschool programs support them to layer action onto their STEM  learning. If you would like to know more or submit a blog about your  youth action program, please contact us.

Throughout my career as a scientist and educator, I have strived to provide opportunities for learners of all ages to engage in the process of science in ways that are relevant and connected to their lives. As the Director of Outreach and Science for the FieldScope Project based at BSCS Science Learning, I support the use of the FieldScope web-based tools to support young learners and the public to collect and analyze community and citizen science data to understand the world around them and take informed actions. FieldScope is a powerful tool for young people and their communities to use data to make change.

FieldScope is a map-based data collection and analysis platform for citizen and community science projects, or other datasets that you want to share. The platform is a tool for engaging with data that can help communities understand environmental and social challenges and help learners of all ages make meaning of datasets and turn data into stories.

FieldScope is used in a variety of educational and community settings and is a great fit for out-of-school time programs looking to engage young people in STEM to identify community needs and create stories for change. The Invitations to Inquiry Lessons provide an introduction to the platform tools for informal or formal educators to guide explorations of existing FieldScope datasets. In these 2-4 hour activities, students manipulate data and interpret graphs and maps to answer questions about environmental phenomena, such as light pollution or possible sources of nutrients or heavy metal contamination in waterways. These activities can serve as a steppingstone for thinking about the needs and interests of your local community, and what kinds of data would be useful for answering important questions.

We are continuously bringing on new projects, learning about how communities want to or are currently using the platform, and refining the tools based on user feedback and project needs. We have been thrilled to collaborate with many new projects over the last year, including:

• The TickTalk Project, recently featured in the Washington Post, in collaboration with Frostburg State University scientists and Maryland State Parks. This program crowd sources tick data to understand the prevalence of Lyme disease and life history patterns of ticks, and raises awareness in rural western Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania about how the recent arrival of deer ticks in the region is connected to climate change.
• Project CSI and #WeAreCoastal, using environmental DNA (eDNA) analyses and intertidal monitoring protocols in remote regions of Newfoundland and Nunavut, Canada, to ensure that communities, including after-school clubs and classroom groups, can monitor for invasive species and understand changes in local ecosystems over time.
• Computer Science for Climate Action in collaboration with UC San Diego, the San Diego Science Project, and Stanislaus County Office of Education. This project provides schools with physical computing devices and mini weather stations to understand how urban greening can help to cool California communities experiencing more extreme heat waves with climate change, and how environmental and ecological data can inform greening projects.
• River Otter Ecology Project, which monitors the expansion of the river otter range in northern California, and is now collaborating with Friends of the Verde River in Arizona and the Elizabeth River Project in Virginia to collect otter sightings and help track the health of local waterways.

As part of these projects, FieldScope co-designs workshops with project leaders, community members, and/or educators, that introduce users to the platform and engaging community members in exploring and telling stories with data.

We are excited to continue growing the FieldScope community. Please reach out to info@fieldscope.org if these tools could be of use in your project!