- Convenors:
-
Yaela Golumbic
(Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv University)
Sebastian Harnacker (TU Wien)
Alanya den Boer (Wageningen University Research (WUR))
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Roundtable
Short Abstract
This roundtable explores how citizen science can be meaningfully integrated into university teaching and training. Focusing on interdisciplinarity, pedagogy, and institutional support, it invites diverse perspectives to advance CS education across disciplines, regions, and academic traditions.
Description
This roundtable, organized by the citizen science and universities WG, will explore the opportunities and challenges of embedding Citizen Science (CS) into university courses across disciplinary, institutional and geographic borders. As CS grows across Europe, it still often sits at the margins of academia. Embedding it in the training of future professionals is essential to fully realizing CS potential and securing its place in the scientific and societal landscape. The session will focus on five central topics:
1. Interdisciplinary Perspective: How can different fields effectively embed CS in their study programs curricula?
2. Incentives: How can faculty be motivated to teach CS? What institutional structures are needed and how do they align with existing initiatives?
3. Implementation in practice: Which tools, projects, and materials to choose for supporting CS teaching?
4. Pedagogical Priorities: What key aspects need to be addressed in courses with a CS component? Scientific content, methods, community contributions or reflections on science and society?
5. Curricular Placement: At what academic stages should CS be introduced and how does the teaching focus differ across these stages?
This session welcomes diverse perspectives and contributions, with a focus on institutional, geographic, and disciplinary peripheries, such as under-resourced universities, fields new to CS, and cross-border education efforts. We invite participants to engage in a lively, collaborative discussion on how CS can act as a transformative approach to teaching, bridging disciplinary silos and connecting universities with communities. Participants will gain practical examples and collaboration ideas to further integrate CS within their institutions.
Accepted contributions
Short Abstract
The University of Groningen has embedded citizen science in research and education, from MSc/PhD projects to dedicated courses. Insights from these activities will inform roundtable debates on pedagogy, incentives, and curricular integration.
Abstract
Citizen science (CS) offers powerful opportunities for universities to connect research, education, and society. At the University of Groningen (UG), CS has become an increasingly important approach for addressing sustainability challenges, biodiversity conservation, public health, and disaster preparedness. This roundtable contribution includes insights from ongoing and planned citizen science initiatives at UG, highlighting both research applications and their integration into teaching and training.
Contribution to the roundtable discussion includes an overview of CS activities across the university, illustrating how community engagement has been embedded into diverse disciplinary contexts. Concrete examples include PhD projects related to resources sustainability and disaster risk management, as well as MSc-level research projects at the intersection of CS, sustainability-related topics, science communication and science education.
Beyond research, UG actively explores the role of citizen science in education. CS projects are being embedded in university-level courses to support experiential learning, interdisciplinarity, and reflection on science/society relations. These experiences contribute to broader discussions on pedagogical priorities, institutional incentives, and curricular placement, which relate to the key themes of this roundtable. Importantly, they showcase how CS can function not only as a research method but also as a transformative pedagogical tool, equipping students with skills for collaborative, socially engaged science.
Short Abstract
This proposal presents a master’s-level activity that helps educators develop research skills by planning authentic projects. Tutor reflections highlight challenges, scaffolded support, tool selection, and core pedagogical priorities, fostering practical, reflective integration of Citizen Science.
Abstract
This proposal presents a structured inquiry design activity developed within a master’s-level course (usually taken by educators), developed to help students learn to act as researchers and develop inquiry-based projects. The assignment fosters skills in formulating research questions, planning methods, and navigating the investigation process, cultivating ownership of research and supporting independent, reflective educators. By guiding students to design projects centred on authentic educational scenarios—such as improving accessibility on field trips or online learning—it positions them to embed Citizen Science methodologies in their practice.
Reflections from four tutors, each with several years’ experience and around 80 students per cohort, reveal key student patterns. Many initially did not see themselves as researchers—even when only planning, not conducting, the inquiry. Expanding topic choices beyond field trips increased accessibility and relevance, especially for those without prior field trip experience. The activity reliably challenged participants, but its scaffolded design—described as “like stabilisers on bicycles”—helped demystify the process and showed one need not be a “super researcher,” just aware of the scientific process. Students struggled to distinguish research questions from hypotheses and to design feasible questions, timelines, and justifications for tool use. Despite hurdles, tutors valued how the activity initiated participants into educational research, building foundational inquiry competence and offering a practical, accessible path to integrate Citizen Science approaches.
This activity encouraged thoughtful selection of tools, projects, and materials suitable for diverse classroom contexts, while pedagogically emphasising not only scientific content but also inquiry methods, ethical reflection, community contributions, and the societal dimensions of science.
Short Abstract
Our contribution will describe our experience embedding virtual exchange between a Scottish and a US university to facilitate Collaborative Online International Learning projects with citizen science. Our 6 week exchange focused on place-based research as a vehicle for cultural exchange.
Abstract
We will share our experience engaging in a Virtual Exchange (VE) between Brandeis University (Environmental Studies/Biology) and the University of Strathclyde (Humanities and Social Sciences - Geography Education Training) as a successful model for bridging disciplinary, institutional, and connecting geographic silos while embedding citizen science in university teaching. Our six-week project focused on a comparative, place-based study of local environments in Waltham, MA (Charles River) and Glasgow, UK (River Clyde) to explore the localized impacts of climate change.
The core of our contribution lies in the methodology: we actively bridged disciplinary divides by having students collaboratively teach and utilize contrasting tools—the biological data collection of iNaturalist (biodiversity and phenology monitoring) and the social assessment of the Place Standard Tool (sustainability planning). This cross-pollination of methods was crucial for fostering a holistic, socio-ecological perspective on the climate crisis.
To overcome institutional and geographic silos, the VE employed weekly, structured 60-minute virtual sessions emphasizing mixed-university breakout rooms for collaboration and exchange. This format ensured students engaged in cross-cultural exchange through data-driven collaboration, culminating in final projects where each group explicitly integrated their partners' data and perspectives.
This model demonstrates how targeted VE can simultaneously enhance cross-disciplinary communication, promote the utility of citizen science for localized climate change awareness, and cultivate a deeper, culturally-nuanced understanding of global challenges. We will discuss the practical VE framework, collaboration success metrics, and how student reflections confirmed the enhanced understanding of both climate change and interdisciplinary partnership.
Short Abstract
Spain is increasingly incorporating CS into universities, driven by policies and grounded in decades of initiatives. Ibercivis’ experience in promoting and developing CS shows how it can become a structural part of research at universities –excellent, sustainable, and linked to social development.
Abstract
In recent years, Spain has witnessed a significant institutional drive to integrate Citizen Science (CS) into the university system. This process is largely shaped by a legislative and evaluative context transformed by the Organic Law of the University System (2023), the Science, Technology, and Innovation Act (2022), and the revised evaluation criteria of the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (2023), which explicitly recognize CS as a dimension of open science and societal impact. This framework provides a strong incentive for faculty to incorporate CS into their academic activities, promoting collaborative, interdisciplinary training and new evaluation models. Simultaneously, this situation illustrates the bidirectional influence between CS and policy: regulatory support builds on robust pre-existing CS initiatives in Spain.
Since its inception in 2006, the Ibercivis Foundation has played a key role in the development of CS in Spain. In meetings promoted together with the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (e.g., within RIECS-Concept, 2025) and initiatives such as the creation of the CS and Universities Steering Group (2022), or two different plans for strengthening CS in Spain (from 2017 to 2019), among others, Ibercivis has gathered many hundreds of representatives from universities, research centres, public administrations, the third sector and private actors, laying the foundations for the best development of CS in Spain, particularly regarding CS training.
Building on this experience, Ibercivis is advancing a Framework Program for Citizen Science Training for the Spanish university system, aimed at equipping the academic community with open and participatory research practices. This strategy seeks to establish networks of trainers and shared resources, consolidating CS as a structural and sustainable component of teaching, research, and academic evaluation, while fostering long-term collaboration between universities and the whole society.
As an Ibercivis member involved in these processes, I can contribute my/our experience.
Short Abstract
Our contribution highlights student perspectives on citizen science in higher education. Drawing on our own project, Konstanz on AI, we reflect on opportunities and challenges for embedding citizen science into university systems and student-led projects.
Abstract
Citizen Science in higher education offers a unique approach to university teaching and research, yet the student perspective has so far often been underrepresented. In our project on the perception of artificial intelligence, we were able to move beyond the classroom and collaborate directly with citizens to co-produce knowledge. This shift from theory to practice was particularly enriching for us as students, as it allowed us to connect academic learning with lived everyday realities in the city we live in.
At the same time, several challenges became visible when conducting citizen science within a university setting. Institutional requirements such as rigid semester schedules, grading systems and dependence on funding limited the scope of what could realistically be achieved. The short timeframe of a semester encouraged surface-level work rather than deeper exploration. Furthermore, bureaucratic processes reduced flexibility, while we also experienced the tension between wishing for clear structures and valuing creative freedom.
Despite these difficulties, the project provided substantial learning experiences. We gained new insights into different social realities and saw the importance of creating open and low-threshold spaces for exchange. We also learned about the value of engaging with diverse perspectives and the role of openness in shaping collaborative research.
With our contribution we aim to provide insights to the roundtable on how student voices can broaden the understanding of best practices and guide the future integration of citizen science in academic settings.