Engaging citizens – Page 3 – Australian Citizen Science Association

06Mar 2020 by Kade Mills No Comments

ACSA-Vic event: How can Citizen Science contribute to public health?

Communication & promotion, Engaging citizens, Meetings and Events

Join our next Citizen Science event and discover how citizen science can contribute to public health. When: 3pm - 5:00pm, 25 March, 2020 Where: Kathleen Syme Library and Community Centre, 251 Faraday St, Carlton. RSVP: via Eventbrite Guest presenters: Ann Borda, Centre for the Digital Transformation of Health - The University of Melbourne Ann is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for the Digital Transformation of Health at The University of Melbourne. Ann has a PhD in information science from University College London which has served as a springboard for her commitment towards transdisciplinary scholarship. Ann's own research focuses on participatory health, digital health literacy, and smart cultural heritage. Ollie Conlan, Bicycle Network More than two thirds of Australians, including children, don’t get enough exercise. The stats tell us…

05Mar 2020 by Amy Slocombe No Comments

ACSA Bushfire Response projects audit and promotion

Collaboration & partnerships, Engaging citizens

Early in the new year we were waking up to the realisation of how awful and extensive all the bushfires across Australia were. We were also seeing a huge response from the public who wanted to contribute, to do something to help affected wildlife which we were seeing perhaps surviving the bushfires but subsequently in real problems because of a lack of water, food and shelter/cover. We also realised that none of us knew what citizen science we could usefully do that would help scientists and natural resource managers with information about what was happening. We also needed to be guided as to what to look for so as to begin to understand the destructive and regenerative processes we were observing around us. ACSA established an informal working group to…

03Feb 2020 by Amy Slocombe No Comments

Citizen Science Bushfire Response Project Audit

Collaboration & partnerships, Communication & promotion, Engaging citizens

The unprecedented continental scale of the current Australian bushfires is devastating. They have led to the loss of lives, homes, habitats and biodiversity on a huge scale. In this time of extreme loss, we are buoyed by the amazing response of individuals and communities in this time of crisis. We believe there is a role for citizen science to assist across multiple disciplines, at scale, in many research and monitoring capacities to contribute to important and valuable science that is needed now and into the future. ACSA is seeking to support conversations and plans – both short and long term - that help further connect the citizen science community to contribute to the complex efforts required to learn from and understand the impact of the bushfires (see ACSA bushfire response).…

09Dec 2019 by Amy Slocombe No Comments

ACSA Seed Grant Winners

Collaboration & partnerships, Engaging citizens

Congratulations to the recipients of ACSA's Seed Grants for 2019! The Seed Grants were designed as a way of giving back and investing in our members, with two $1,000 grants available to ACSA members to seed their professional or project's growth in line with ACSA's strategic goals of Participation and Practice. And the winners are: Dr Erinn Fagan-Jeffries - Pupils for Parasitoid Wasps: The 'Pupils for Parasitoid Wasps' project involves school children running insect traps to collect parasitic wasps in their local environment, and being involved in naming and describing newly discovered species. Jodie Valpied - Bachhus Marsh Platypus Alliance: The Seed Grant will help provide the necessary resources to the new Bacchus Marsh Platypus Alliance community group to begin a citizen science project on platypus habitat health, and to facilitate community engagement in…

04Sep 2019 by Amy Slocombe No Comments

Tell us more – updating your ACSA member profile

ACSA development, Engaging citizens

Two of the key findings from the Member Survey we conducted last year are: people are seeking a community through ACSA, and members are most interested in exchanging knowledge & experiences, and building a professional network. To help facilitate these wishes, we've expanded the 'My ACSA Profile' section on our website and invite you to enter additional information about yourself and your citizen science experience / engagement. We hope that this will help foster that sense of community and enable you to learn more about other members interests and skill sets, which may help achieve that goal of building a professional network. This information will only visible to other ACSA members who are logged in to the membership portal. We are also working on a search function, which we hope,…

05Aug 2019 by Amy Slocombe 2 Comments

Engaging and Retaining those elusive volunteers…

Blogs, Collaboration & partnerships, Communication & promotion, Education, Engaging citizens

By Jodi Salmond, Reef Check Australia Volunteer engagement and retention have long been an issue for the not for profit sector. Organisations reliant on unpaid workers have substantial investments in time, training, and financial input, as well as an ongoing mentoring/upskilling programs to ensure volunteers feel both valued and supported, in addition to having the right skills to conduct the tasks required of them. Despite this, some volunteers still cancel last minute, or cease to show up at all- leaving organisers stretched, frustrated, and unable to meet funding milestones. We all invest a lot in all our volunteers. I believe that overall, we are great at supporting them; we train them, we guide them, we answer their questions, we thank them for, validate their efforts and make sure everyone feels…

06May 2019 by Amy Slocombe No Comments

Earth Challenge 2020: Research Questions to Help Citizen Science Scale

Collaboration & partnerships, Engaging citizens

A message from the Wilson Centre, USA: Your knowledge + Small digital acts of science = Answers to the world’s most pressing challenges April 22nd, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. In recognition of this milestone a consortium of partners is launching Earth Challenge 2020 (EC2020) as the world’s largest coordinated citizen science campaign to date. By working with existing citizen science projects and building capacity for new activities, EC2020 will foster the collecting and integration of one billion open, interoperable data points to strengthen links between science, the environment, and society. In addition to integrating existing citizen science data, Earth Challenge 2020 will also create a new mobile application and app framework, available in six UN languages, to help communities around the world participate in citizen science.…

02Aug 2018 by Amy Slocombe No Comments

Seed Grants available for ACSA Members – call for applications!

Communication & promotion, Engaging citizens

ACSA is excited to announce a new initiative. As a way of giving back and investing in our members we’ve started the ACSA Seed Grants. The Seed Grants are $500 each and will be awarded to three ACSA members to seed their professional growth or their project’s growth in line with ACSA’s strategic goals of Participation and Practice. These goals are: Participation - Encourage & promote broad and meaningful participation of society in citizen science so people become partners in creating science & increasing science literacy. For example (but not limited to): Activities that encourages participation in a citizen science project, could be a workshop, an event or a school outreach program or an app. Development of a citizen science project that aims to meet these goals Resources or training…

07Jun 2018 by Agi Gedeon No Comments

ACSA-WA Meet + Greet

ACSA development, Collaboration & partnerships, Communication & promotion, Engaging citizens

By Agi Gedeon, ACSA-WA Chair The WA Chapter of the Australian Citizen Science Association was officially launched in February 2018 at the Australian Citizen Science Conference, #CitSciOz18. We had our first ACSA-WA public event on Saturday 12th May and invited citizen science practitioners, volunteers, scientists and end-users to meet and mingle to learn about many active and successful projects. It was a perfect sunny day in King’s Park and there was a good number attending. A few new faces as well. We heard about a number of interesting projects including an astronomy project to be launched by ICRAR, also a bit about DolphinWatch and fungi walks and a PhD project on red-tailed black cockatoos, another on non-insect pollinators and Birdlife Australia. [caption id="attachment_15324" align="alignleft" width="960"] Deborah Bowie, MicroBlitz Project Manager, speaking to…

Category: Engaging citizens