Voluntary design practicum to deliver recommendations for engaging young people in wildlife monitoring via AI footprint identification, guided by Prof. David Dockterman. This project was presented to WildTrack stakeholders for feedback.
Team members: Camlinh To, Bukola Awodumila, Anna Guadarrama
Project Synopsis
WildTrack combines traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) with statistical analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) for the world’s only end-to-end platform for monitoring endangered species using footprints.
WildTrack’s overall objective for this project was to engage pre-teens to teens in the process of conservation through active outdoor participation. Their aim is to develop a new cohort of young citizen scientists through the unique medium of animal footprints and WildTrack’s footprint identification technology (FIT). If children can use their mobile devices to learn to track and identify animals in real-time, they will acquire a unique skill and awareness of life in the natural world – one that they can continue to develop through life.
Following a kick-off meeting with Zoe Jewell (co-founder of WildTrack), my team decided that to inform WildTrack’s citizen science initiative, we needed more than just a literature review. In addition to reviewing academic literature on engaging youth in citizen science, we conducted a survey of parents and caregivers and a competitive analysis of popular citizen science apps. We then synthesized our findings to deliver top-level recommendations.
Citizen Science App Competitive Analysis
I conducted a two-part analysis to assess best practices and innovative strategies from top-performing citizen science projects.
- I reviewed 34 top citizen science projects on the platform SciStarter for the year 2020, based on “most joined” and “most contributions.”
- I reviewed features of 21 citizen science projects that had dedicated mobile applications, ranked by the number of downloads in the Google Play store.
I assembled the results of the mobile app analysis into a heat map style visualization:
The greatest differentiators for top-performing projects with mobile apps are below (click to expand):
Group Formation
A majority (83%) of top-performing apps allow for group formation. eBird offers custom portals (e.g. eBird Mexico “aVerAves”; Mass Audubon eBird) which are “managed by local partners and [that] provide local information and birding expertise.” iNaturalist allows truly granular group formation (“projects”) based on affinity (e.g. LGBTQ+ Naturalists, Girl Scouts) or location (e.g. Trinidad & Tobago Bioblitz). These overlap with events, as some projects are limited in time. NASA’s Globe Program (with associated app Globe Observer), allows for both public and private “team” formation.
Educator Support
All leading projects offer resources for educators. The Globe Program offers in-person and online
training for teachers, as well as an informal education toolkit for integration into programming at “museums, science centers, zoos and aquariums, parks, public gardens, libraries and more.” FrogID
offers lesson plans (aligned to Australian Curriculum standards), slideshows, fact sheets, and activities. Loss of the Night, in cooperation with Globe at Night, offers both activity sheets and alignment with US Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Marine Debris Tracker, through partnership with National Geographic, offers an online professional development course for teachers as well as a student action journal.
GPS (Localization)
By automatically pulling up maps, species, and groups close to the user, apps which enable GPS permissions increase relevance and facilitate connection to local groups. 90% of apps that asked users to make observations about ecology or the environment used localization.
Timed Events
All top-performing apps offered timed events such as competitions, blitzes, and campaigns. Examples include the aforementioned user-initiated projects in iNaturalist, “eBirder of the Month” competitions
and campaigns celebrating World Migratory Bird Day in eBird, monthly challenges and yearly campaigns for Earth Day for The Globe Program, Frog ID Week by FrogID (including a Top Frogger competition), and constellation campaigns in Globe at Night / Loss of the Night. Many events offer physical prizes in addition to clout.
Offline Capability
Some apps prompt the user to download local information packets to their device to enable use without an internet connection, including a “local bird pack” when opening eBird and offline frog call recordings and photos in FrogID. Several apps also allowed for offline collection of data or photos that could be uploaded and synced once an internet connection was re-established.
Platform Integration
Several apps we reviewed were not only affiliated with SciStarter (an online citizen science hub with over 3,000 projects and approaching 100,000 registered users), but were integrated so that users
could log in with their SciStarter credentials (Marine Debris Tracker) or sync data to their SciStarter account (Globe Observer, CitiSci). SciStarter also has existing library kits, including quick start guides, promotional materials, and certificates.
Final Presentation and Recommendations
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