We believe that the most educational and inspiring way to learn about citizen science is to interact with other enthusiasts. After the success of our previous workshops on common challenges in citizen science, Scivil and Stickydot are organising a series of four thematic workshops in a similar format.
For whom?
The workshops are aimed at people who are involved or interested in coordinating, organising or supporting citizen science initiatives. Experience with citizen science is welcome, but not required, just your willingness to ask, share and discuss about the topic!
As different perspectives will enrichen the discussion in our workshops, we’d like to encourage not just citizen science enthusiasts from Flanders or Belgium, but from around the globe to take part.
To facilitate international participation, our workshop will take place in English and online, via the Zoom platform.
Programme
Each workshop will kick off with a short inspirational testimonial by a citizen science practitioner, followed by breakout and plenary sessions where you will be discussing and exchanging questions, experiences and challenges with the other participants.
Anne Land-Zandstra, Leiden University, Netherlands (TBC)
What challenges do we face as researchers when launching an initiative on citizen science? In this session we will explore the barriers to getting started: defining our scope, identifying research questions, starting a community from scratch and establishing partnerships.
Open data is currently a hot topic and citizen science has a significant contribution to make. In this second session we will focus on barriers related to data in citizen science projects: from collection to analysis, infrastructures to interoperability. We’ll hear about Scivil’s recently launched Data Charter and discuss the common challenges it raises.
What innovative ways are Citizen Science projects engaging their audiences? How do we ensure we reach our target audiences, going beyond the usual crowd, and what techniques really work to build a convincing campaign? This session will explore a range of challenges we face in communications around our work, and highlight some specific good practices from across Europe as well as in Scivil’s practical guide.
How can we integrate citizen science practices across the organisations where we work? This session will draw inspiration from the work of the Dutch citizen science support centre to look at institutional barriers to internal buy-in and capacity building for citizen science. We will also hear about a new guide on how universities and local government organisations can facilitate CS projects in the long term. There will also be an opportunity at the end of the session to express interest in further international cooperation among citizen science networks.
All times are in Central European (winter) Time.
You can sign up for just one workshop, all four, or anything in between. Participation is free.
Not your typical seminar
These workshops are set up as peer learning sessions. Our moderators will not provide you with clear cut answers or guidelines for citizen science (you might find some in our guides and manuals). We hope you will learn from the experiences and insights shared by other participants. In turn, we hope you will be willing to share as well as learn!
