Students Doing Citizen Science on an Unfolding Pandemic

School-based science inquiry tends to focus on already answered questions. We describe how we used the COVID-19 pandemic in a high school citizen science unit for students to witness and engage in real-time science. High school students developed proposals to study questions about their experiences related to the pandemic. Teacher and student interviews and observations showed that this globally-relevant experience also offered a personally relevant context through which to understand the scientific process.

Vasudevan, V., Matuk, C., Bumbacher, E., Davidesco, I., Dikker, S., Sadhukha, S., Chaloner, K., Burgas, K., Martin, R. & Shevchenko, Y. (2021). Students doing citizen science on an unfolding pandemic. In Proceedings of the International Society for the Learning Sciences Conference, pp. 975-976. The International Society for the Learning Sciences. Online. DOI: 10.22318/icls2021.975