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      Science Learning via Participation in Online Citizen Science

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          Abstract

          We investigate the development of scientific content knowledge of volunteers participating in online citizen science projects in the Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org), including the astronomy projects Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org) and Planet Hunters (www.planethunters.org). We use econometric methods to test how measures of project participation relate to success in a science quiz, controlling for factors known to correlate with scientific knowledge. Citizen scientists believe they are learning about both the content and processes of science through their participation. Won't don't directly test the latter, but we find evidence to support the former - that more actively engaged participants perform better in a project-specific science knowledge quiz, even after controlling for their general science knowledge. We interpret this as evidence of learning of science content inspired by participation in online citizen science.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          2016-01-22
          2016-04-14
          Article
          1601.05973
          031ebce8-264d-44a9-a75e-ed8f0d64ff61

          http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

          History
          Custom metadata
          32 pages (9 pages of Appendix material). Accepted for publication in the Journal of Science Communication: Special Edition on Citizen Science, Part II (JCOM; http://jcom.sissa.it/). v2 corrects minor errors discovered in proofs
          astro-ph.IM cs.CY physics.ed-ph

          General physics,Applied computer science,Instrumentation & Methods for astrophysics

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