Citizen Scientist Skill Recommendations

Citizen scientists need to be scientifically literate.  They need to be able to understand how to think like a scientist, and to observe and evaluate so-called scientific information.  CS's engae in scientific activities such as data gathering for web-based science projects.  They can further develop their own original questions and theories about the topics on which they are gathering data.  As they interact with other peer CS's and scientists, they can evaluate the evidence-based claimed of others as they take part in this growing scientific community of practice.

CS can be critics or defenders of positions, which can also serve them as a means to knowledge building.  Web-based activities that promote and facilitate collaboration and scientific discourse among the CS community, the general public,  and scientists,  builds the critical thinking and reasoning skills of scientific thinking of the CS.  They can use one another's ideas a a place to begin making their own conclusions about the evidence gathered and make evidence-based claims. 

Providing the CS with scaffolds for evidence construction is crucial.  Learning to construct an arument using their claim, evidence and reasoning is the basic building block.  This focuses on the using evidence to make the argument, and does not necessarily result in "correct answers".  However, commentors (and technology scaffolds for discourse) using the same ideas of evidence based claims can encourage the CS to reflect on their conclusions and evolve their thinking to a deeper level, perhaps resulting in differeing claims.

The more discourse and peer claims that a CS has access to, as well as questions, comments, new ideas, suggestions from others, links to new information, effect the ongoing evolution of the CS scientific discourse skills, as well as their deepening knowledge construction of the science they are investigating.

References
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