PROJECT DESIGN
The collaborative ‘Grass Gazers’ citizen science project was designed to
geolocate, categorize and indicate flowering behavior of grasses around
students’ homes through an activity named “Tracking Grass Species”
(Fig. 2). Before the students began undertaking the practical activity,
it was important that they had background knowledge on the project and
safety information as well as instructions on how to undertake the data
collection. The QUT ARG provided the agricultural science coordinator
with a set of resources (documented versions of the developed risk
assessments and the modules on pollen identification, tracking grass
species, measuring field greenness, using a citizen science data entry
platform and forensic palynology) covering this information. The science
coordinator then used this information to generate online class lessons
that incorporated many teaching tools (e.g. questions, activities,
images using simplified language) to help the students understand the
project and the risks involved. This was done using an online platform
called ‘Stile’ (Stile Education 2019) with functionality that included
uploading videos, multi-choice and open questions, mind maps, an open
canvas function to annotate images and audio commentary. Once the
students were familiar with this important safety information, they were
then able to begin the practical component of this project. The project
required the students to look outside their household or around their
local neighborhood, under supervision, and identify grass species using
an online data collection platform, Epicollect5 (EpiCollect5 2020). QUT
ARG developed a project on this platform with an online survey that
asked about the grass species observed (Appendix). This information
included key phenological characteristics and images that would enable
the students and the researchers to identify grasses that the students
were observing. As the students submitted data and photo images into
Epicollect5, they were able to visualize data collected by themselves
and their school mates. This online platform also allows the student to
visualize the geographical location of all data on a map. The data
collected can be exported by the students for further educational
activities developed by their science teachers.