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Designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning

In recent years, the number and scale of environmental citizen science programmes that involve lay people in scientific research have increased rapidly. Many of these initiatives are concerned with the recording and identification of species, processes which are increasingly mediated through digital...

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Autores principales: Sharma, Nirwan, Colucci-Gray, Laura, Siddharthan, Advaith, Comont, Richard, van der Wal, René
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6354666/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30713813
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5965
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author Sharma, Nirwan
Colucci-Gray, Laura
Siddharthan, Advaith
Comont, Richard
van der Wal, René
author_facet Sharma, Nirwan
Colucci-Gray, Laura
Siddharthan, Advaith
Comont, Richard
van der Wal, René
author_sort Sharma, Nirwan
collection PubMed
description In recent years, the number and scale of environmental citizen science programmes that involve lay people in scientific research have increased rapidly. Many of these initiatives are concerned with the recording and identification of species, processes which are increasingly mediated through digital interfaces. Here, we address the growing need to understand the particular role of digital identification tools, both in generating scientific data and in supporting learning by lay people engaged in citizen science activities pertaining to biological recording communities. Starting from two well-known identification tools, namely identification keys and field guides, this study focuses on the decision-making and quality of learning processes underlying species identification tasks, by comparing three digital interfaces designed to identify bumblebee species. The three interfaces varied with respect to whether species were directly compared or filtered by matching on visual features; and whether the order of filters was directed by the interface or a user-driven open choice. A concurrent mixed-methods approach was adopted to compare how these different interfaces affected the ability of participants to make correct and quick species identifications, and to better understand how participants learned through using these interfaces. We found that the accuracy of identification and quality of learning were dependent upon the interface type, the difficulty of the specimen on the image being identified and the interaction between interface type and ‘image difficulty’. Specifically, interfaces based on filtering outperformed those based on direct visual comparison across all metrics, and an open choice of filters led to higher accuracy than the interface that directed the filtering. Our results have direct implications for the design of online identification technologies for biological recording, irrespective of whether the goal is to collect higher quality citizen science data, or to support user learning and engagement in these communities of practice.
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spelling pubmed-63546662019-02-01 Designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning Sharma, Nirwan Colucci-Gray, Laura Siddharthan, Advaith Comont, Richard van der Wal, René PeerJ Conservation Biology In recent years, the number and scale of environmental citizen science programmes that involve lay people in scientific research have increased rapidly. Many of these initiatives are concerned with the recording and identification of species, processes which are increasingly mediated through digital interfaces. Here, we address the growing need to understand the particular role of digital identification tools, both in generating scientific data and in supporting learning by lay people engaged in citizen science activities pertaining to biological recording communities. Starting from two well-known identification tools, namely identification keys and field guides, this study focuses on the decision-making and quality of learning processes underlying species identification tasks, by comparing three digital interfaces designed to identify bumblebee species. The three interfaces varied with respect to whether species were directly compared or filtered by matching on visual features; and whether the order of filters was directed by the interface or a user-driven open choice. A concurrent mixed-methods approach was adopted to compare how these different interfaces affected the ability of participants to make correct and quick species identifications, and to better understand how participants learned through using these interfaces. We found that the accuracy of identification and quality of learning were dependent upon the interface type, the difficulty of the specimen on the image being identified and the interaction between interface type and ‘image difficulty’. Specifically, interfaces based on filtering outperformed those based on direct visual comparison across all metrics, and an open choice of filters led to higher accuracy than the interface that directed the filtering. Our results have direct implications for the design of online identification technologies for biological recording, irrespective of whether the goal is to collect higher quality citizen science data, or to support user learning and engagement in these communities of practice. PeerJ Inc. 2019-01-28 /pmc/articles/PMC6354666/ /pubmed/30713813 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5965 Text en © 2019 Sharma et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Conservation Biology
Sharma, Nirwan
Colucci-Gray, Laura
Siddharthan, Advaith
Comont, Richard
van der Wal, René
Designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning
title Designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning
title_full Designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning
title_fullStr Designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning
title_full_unstemmed Designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning
title_short Designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning
title_sort designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning
topic Conservation Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6354666/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30713813
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5965
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