The Citizen Science Approach to Research: Report from GW4 Workshop, Bath

Source: thinkprogress.org

The idea of harnessing the collective or community input for a project is quite appealing to my African mind. Grassroots involvement fosters group ownership and often leads to better results. Movements such as GhanaThink, BloggingGhana and Enactus ride on the numbers and efforts of its members. When applied to science, public participation aids data collection and organisation, research design, and facilitates greater understanding of scientific phenomena. The active involvement of volunteers or "lay people" in the scientific enterprise, "citizen science", is a fast-growing paradigm in the scientific community and has the same essence as open source, open data and civic participation movements. It has wide applications ranging from social science research, through ecological studies, to unravelling the mysteries of the wider universe. I recently had the fortune to be part of a citizen science workshop organised by the United Kingdom's GW4 Universities at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, (BRLSI).

At the #Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (@BRLSI) for a day's workshop on #CitizenScience. Hope to learn some cool stuff.
— Gameli Adzaho (@gamelmag) March 26, 2014

We were welcomed by Dr Helen Featherstone of University of Exeter who gave a brief intro of the day's activities. Dr Robert Simpson from University of Oxford, in the first presentation, gave an overview for the need and benefits of citizen science, drawing examples from the Zooniverse project.

.@orbitingfrog giving an insight into galaxy zoo & which began with kevin, a phd student #GW4CS pic.twitter.com/ZcwxCJpjkK
— erinmaochu (@erinmaochu) March 26, 2014

He made an interesting point on validating crowdsource data- data contributed by the most accurate and least accurate volunteers are equally important because of the consistency. Thus you can tell whether the data coming in is accurate or inaccurate.

Dr Erinma Ochu from the University of Manchester then explored the topic from a social science perspective, with examples from the Sunflower Experiment and other projects. Here's a key point she made:

You need to think about what participants stand to learn- Dr Erinma Ohui #CitizenScience
— Gameli Adzaho (@gamelmag) March 26, 2014

One of my favourite parts of the day was the structured networking session where the participants interacted about how they use citizen science in their work. In short three minute spells, I learnt briefly about projects such as mathMETics, IfOnly, and BodyTrack.

Next was a panel on citizen science case-studies featuring Lisa Austin (Bath, IfOnly), Alexander Todd (Exeter, CliMathNet), Dr Emma Rich (Bath, Citizen Journalism), Dr Jaap Velthuis (Bristol, HiSparc), and Dr Sarah Perkins (Cardiff, Project Splatter).

Panel discussion on GW4 citizen science projects

After the round-table, we broke for lunch amidst networking, followed by the breakout sessions. The breakouts focused on recruiting citizen scientists, methodological approaches and ethics. I was in the methodological approaches/ethics group and some of the issues raised include data ownership, blurring the line between academic and activist, limitations of institutional review processes, and citizen science governance.

Some useful technological and web resources for citizen science researchers were also shared among the group. Some of the less popular ones include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Storify, University Wiki pages, Open Street Map, Google tools (Maps, Apps, etc), Carto DB (for visualisation), Ushahidi (for crowdmapping) and Github (for open source code). 

I learnt a lot from what researchers are doing in the GW4 universities and other institutions. More than that, I enjoyed the brilliant opportunity to interact with the brains behind some really interesting citizen science projects. Hopefully we can do more with the larger public to piece together the puzzle that is life and derive better solutions for our pressing problems. Meanwhile, the conversation continues on Twitter via #GW4CS.

Towards Open Education in Ghana- What is Happening?

Last Friday, 8th June, I had the opportunity to participate in a forum on Open Education in Ghana. The forum was part of Innovation Week 2012 organised by the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE). The diverse audience included students, educators, software developers, entrepreneurs and people from government. Overall, the discussion was rich, informative and engaging making the event one of the best fora I've been in. Thumbs up to Dorothy Gordon and her team. 

A participant from Central African Republic sharing her joy at being at the forum

 The programme started with a discussion on open education, its relevance and the experiences of the audience. A graduate of SOS College shared how he used the Internet to study thermodynamics, a challenging topic, for his IB examination. An interesting debate on whether the rise of technology signaled the redundancy of the human element in education came up. The consensus reached was that "school was mainly for networking and socialization", and so the human element is still crucial. 

How are Ghanaians using open education resources?

The team from AITI-KACE then presented open courseware platforms such as Khan Academy, MIT Open Courseware, BBC KS3 and Videolectures.net. These platforms serve educationsl content free of tight copyright restrictions. The issue of dearth of relevant local educational content was raised. Someone mentioned that Ashesi University have their course materials freely accessible by the public. I recall that Prof Dakubu and co were working on an online system called Kewl at University of Ghana around 2006/2007. I'm not up to date on the status of the project. Some strategies for building content, including training for both students and teachers were discussed. 

Next was a panel discussion on Open Education resources featuring officials of the Ghana Education Service, Ministry of Education and AITI. Also on the panel was Anis Haffar, a thought leader in the Ghanaian Educationi space. Some of the key discussion points were on the need for government to step up its interventions to integrate ICT into education and the need for a conscious national effort to create open courseware for the pre-tertiary levels. It was revealed that government will soon roll out e-SHS to minimize the effects of some of the problems facing our educational system: lack of easily accessible textbooks, low number of quality teachers and inadequate science equipment. It was interesting to learn that the educational authorities will be reviewing the policy that restrains students from using various digital devices in schools, so as to ensure that the full benefits of open eduction are realized. 

Speaking on the keynote "Education in the IT Age", Annis Haffar stressed on the merits of deploying ICT as part of an integrated strategy, rather than as a standalone tool. Hands-on activities, schemes of work and teaching methodologies, he said, were other tools that needed to be sharpened to improve the status quo. By showing images of schools that lacked teachers, electricity and books, he demonstrated that much was left to be done in terms of the basic ingredients needed to ensure quality education. Also, he was of the view that educational instruction must be tailored to affect both the affective and cognitive domains of students, stressing that one of the most important things teachers must do is to inspire their students to be able to learn by themselves rather than trying to teach them everything. 

Annis Haffar in action: teaching methodologies and planning must accompany technology to make any headway

Presentations of various innovations interspersed segments of the programme. Anita Hato, a fresh graduate of the University of Ghana, presented her undergraduate project, Kiddie World, an online system to help kindergarten children to build basic literacy and numeracy skills. Another presenter spoke about a software system he built that uses 2D barcodes to check the authenticity of drugs. 

The forum on open education was a refreshing change from all the talk shops we are greeted with every now and then. The practical demonstrations of what is being done and what could be done was inspiring and challenging. What are your views on integrating open education into Ghanaian education? What should be done to ensure that it is done right? If you're a teacher, school administrator or just someone interested in contributing change to education in Ghana, join the Ghana Educators Network now.