Fostering multidisciplinary collaborations amongst researchers is essential to help address the complex challenges our society is facing. And sometimes, it only takes one workshop to spark a breakthrough idea. This is exactly what happened when representatives of three COST Actions, EuroScitizen, ALIEN-CSI and CS-EU, met during a workshop in Berlin in 2020 and decided to put their common expertise together to tackle the need to promote a better understanding of evolutionary biology.
With Citizen Science as a common ground to their research fields, these three COST Actions agreed on its potential to tackle the lack of public understanding around evolutionary biology. This resulted in the publication of a brand-new scientific paper that makes a case for incorporating evolution education into Citizen Science.
Members of the three Actions, Prof Till Bruckermann and Dr Miriam Brandt from both COST Actions CS-EU and EuroScitizen, Prof Helen Roy and Dr Quentin Groom from COST Action ALIEN-CSI, and Dr Tania Jenkins and Dr Dusan Misevic from EuroScitizen, answered our questions to depict the critical aspect of this topic and the value of their collaborations.
Citizen Science to improve understanding of evolutionary biology
What we call the ‘evolutionary processes’ shapes all aspects of the natural world, from the human microbiome to zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistance. Central to biology, evolution is a topic that has implications on a wide range of areas. Looking at the big picture, it touches upon complex global challenges, such as food security, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Understanding the ins and outs of evolutionary processes is therefore crucial to making informed decisions about such important societal issues.
Taking stock of this aspect helps us grasp how limited understanding of evolution can profoundly weaken one’s ability to make rational decisions. And the truth is that evolution is generally poorly understood and not always accepted by the public. As a matter of fact, scientific literacy in evolution is necessary for the general public to realistically understand its importance for daily life issues.
And it is exactly here that Citizen Science (CS), understood as “the participation of non-professional scientists in research”, offers an immense potential. The network of researchers involved in these three COST Actions, EuroScitizen, ALIEN-CSI and CS-EU, have experience with CS in their research activities and are therefore each well aware of the solutions it can offer.
“It is timely as few Citizen Science projects tackle evolutionary topics. We consider this to be a missed opportunity as CS projects provide a good context for learning. For example, invasion biologists are often asked why they need to control species. Explaining to the public about the value of biodiversity and unique ecosystems is difficult without a foundation in evolution. Concepts such as ‘competition’, ‘selection’, ‘genetic drift’ all help people’s understanding.” the group of researchers tells us.
“It often takes time before current research is taken up in science lessons. Through citizen science projects, however, not only students but also adults can participate in current research and thus learn for life.”
The power of multidisciplinary collaborations
The research networks enabled by COST Actions are by nature multidisciplinary, bringing together researchers from a wide range of different backgrounds. Grouping several of these networks can therefore give rise to even more innovative solutions. In this case, as evolutionary biologists are not necessarily experts on teaching or communication related issues, the involvement of wider research communities was critical to opening new horizons and helping harness the potential of Citizen Science. It is during the development of the activities of Working Group 6 ‘Citizen Science’ of the EuroScitizen COST Action, that the group noticed the lack of CS projects with a focus on evolutionary biology.
Coming together with the two other Actions for this cross-Action workshop ‘Citizen science as a tool for education and promotion of scientific literacy in evolution’, held over two days in Berlin at the Museum für Naturkunde, allowed them to quickly grasp what they each could put on the table to move towards new solutions:
CS-EU offered expertise on the science of Citizen Science.
EuroScitizen members provided knowledge on evolution education
ALIEN-CSI provided a real-life context where evolutionary biology is important.
“Joining forces across three COST Actions brought together a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines, professional backgrounds and perspectives. This allowed us to comprehensively cover this complex topic, which required a strong foundation in evolutionary biology and its applications, in citizen science as well as in education research.”
The three COST Actions worked together to show the way towards Citizen Science for evolutionary biologists, with the purpose of developing a scientific paper that would provide clear guidelines.
“It was important for us to get out of our disciplinary boundary and come together to learn with experts in other fields such as citizen science and invasion biology in order to be able to make the paper interesting for our main public: evolutionary biologists interested in developing citizen science projects.”
Dr Jenkins from EuroScitzen.
Enabling evolutionary biologists to design Citizen Science for learning evolution
Their collaboration resulted in a comprehensive, 10-page Open Access peer reviewed scientific paper: ‘Promoting scientific literacy in evolution through citizen science’ published by The Royal Society, aimed both at evolutionary biologists and practitioners in Citizen Science.
The paper’s purpose is to act as a primer on how to design Citizen Science with distinct learning outcomes in evolution. While it provides guidance for evolutionary biologists, the paper also gives recommendations on how existing Citizen Science projects could be used to teach people about evolutionary concepts. In addition, different types of learning outcomes are defined as well with guidelines on how to evaluate these outcomes.
The three COST Actions argue that it is not sufficient to claim that CS will, by default, result in a learning outcome, but that projects need to explicitly design learning outcomes and include evaluation to assess the success of different measures.
Structuring the acquired knowledge to explain biological scenarios requires synthesis and coordination of multiple perspectives, which is also a challenge for learning and teaching this topic. The collaboration amongst the three Actions has also been a strong enabling factor: “it provided a translation service into the different disciplines by making the respective concepts and terms that the discipline works with (e.g., citizen science, scientific literacy) accessible and usable for all.” explains Prof Till Bruckermann.
Commenting on this paper, the three COST Actions strongly recommend evolutionary biologists to develop CS projects and advise the following to their attention: “Think about ways of engaging people with your research and tasks that will be achievable through CS noting that there are many different approaches – for some questions mass participation approaches will be appropriate and for others working with specific groups (e.g., school children) would be the best way forward. Furthermore, it is important to look further than your own scientific interests and seek collaboration with educators and/or education scientists to really make an impact regarding learning.”
Timely, and topical
Since its publication, the paper has already triggered interest and reactions from biologists around the globe.
Fostering collaborations amongst multidisciplinary researchers has been one of COST’s key mission. The collaborative work performed by EuroScitizen, ALIEN-CSI, and CS-EU leads as a great case example of what’s possible when frontlines are pulled apart.
Prof Helen Roy and Dr Quentin Groom from ALIEN-CSI said: “Collaboration has broadened our horizons, helping us learn about and contribute to subjects and disciplines we don’t have experience in, while also sharing our knowledge with others”.
Dr. Miriam Brandt from CS-EU adds: “One field where this is definitely needed is evolutionary biology, since very few citizen science projects with a focus on evolution include explicit learning goals, even though learning about evolution is crucial for today’s science and technology-driven society. We profited immensely from collaborating with EuroScitizen’s education scientists and experts with practical experience in increasing scientific literacy, as well as the colleagues from ALIEN-CSI who are experts on issues showcasing the practical relevance of evolution.”
Dr. Dusan Misevic from EuroScitizen agrees: “By working with colleagues from different COST actions we all we gained valuable knowledge and skills, which will directly carry over to our future professional projects”
“This multidisciplinary perspective was an important learning experience and meant that we could draw on the disciplinary expertise and experts from the three COST Actions at any time.“
Further information
- About COST Action CS-EU
- About COST Action ALIEN-CSI
- About COST Action EuroScitizen
- Read COST news ‘Citizens get the science bug‘