I have a string of copypasta.
The first in my list is for multiple species.
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They are using the site as individuals, most often.
I am not trying to contol their use anymore. In my daughter’s program, most of the stdents are using CV and not saving their observations in iNat already.
I am going to focus on making the experience more useful, not limited because theyre using it with others.
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As a teacher who trains kids to use inaturalist, I take a few steps to avoid these issues. First, we spend a day on proper inat photography (critiquing photos, giving photo rules, and practicing outside). When uploading an observation, kids have to include (1) two perspectives, (2) an accurate location, and (3) an attempt at an ID. I have all the kids post observations under a class account and put their initials and class period in the notes. After I give them credit for the observation, I delete all but the best photo of each organism to prevent duplicates. It is a lot of work but worth the trouble. The problems that come with these class projects are worth it if we can get two or three kids in each class that stick with it after the project. Some even get their parents hooked on it as well.
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The effects of multiple wrong IDs (whether based on bad photos or not) from teachers/lecturers using iNat as a repository for student observations might “pass quickly” if the observations are made in a location with many observers who will post and confirm credible observations that swamp out the wrong records.
However if that isn’t the case (remote areas - think large parts of Australia) or even areas on the outskirts of population centres where there might be few iNatters, this behaviour can create a false impression of, for example, the dominant Macropod species, in the area.
I am very much in favour of tertiary classes using iNat as a place to store and record their observations. This has great potential for rapidly adding to the knowledge of the biodiversity of the area, particularly if it is repeated year on year.
Where, for example, it would be a class of 30-40 students setting out wildlife cameras for two weeks and uploading the resultant photos to iNat, the numbers of records can be in the hundreds.
Those in charge of the class/project should recognise their obligation to avoid leaving accumulations of junk records on iNat.
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It is important to keep in mind that one of the goals of inat is to involve everyday citizens in contributing to our understanding of biodiversity. Not all of the observations made by everyday citizens are going to be perfect, but we still want to encourage people to become involved in understanding and protecting the environment. I would hate to see inaturalist turn into a scientist or expert only tool that other people can’t or won’t use because they are only novices. There needs to be a way to educate the public on how to use this valuable resource while still enjoying the app and learning as much as they can personally about the things that they are observing.
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Thanks @cowirrie! I hadn’t realized my work made the Official Teacher’s Guide. Some of the info in that lesson needs updating. I kinda keep forgetting this is out there. Thanks for the reminder.
On my To Do Someday list is to find grant funding to convene a group of teachers to write lesson plans, not just on making iNat observations but also analyzing them. I gave an iNat presentation at a STEM education conference once and some math teachers who had wandered in because there wasn’t another session at that time that looked good to them went mad for iNat. They started talking excitedly about how analyzing the data met different math standards and figured into their curriculum. Having lesson plans won’t solve all the sub-par observations at the middle and high school levels but it would make iNat more useful to teachers.
pttrsn wrote:
I recently went through a Master Naturalist certification course – full of adults specifically trying to become naturalists(!!!) – and we had a presentation on iNat, reviewing the guidelines, how to use it, watching video examples of how to observe things, etc. The end result of the observations was exactly the same as described here.
As a member of our state’s Master Naturalist Executive Committee and the banger-of-the-drum-for-iNat I groan in sympathy with this. We create a project for each cohort and then add each collection project to an umbrella project. This makes their observations easier to review. Most of them are pretty good but some of them… ::shakes head::
I will say that people come into our class with all kinds of backgrounds. We’ve had participants that range from a retired AP Environmental Science teacher to folks who “like nature” and are fuzzy on the difference between wild and captive.
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As draining as such observations are, there are times where one good photo can be used to ID the rest.
Take for example these beetle larva which are shown with a ruler so are clearly all one individual grub observed by multiple individual people. A few good photos allow one to ID the whole set.
Also, getting through a set of such observations can be a bit rewarding since it can be so mind-numbing, at least for me.
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Yes, there are all sorts of things that could be done with iNat in science classes without adding observations or identifications. I did a little pilot project myself on using annotations to test a hypothesis as an example. For our recent BioBlitz challenge, I think UNC Greensboro is using the resulting BioBlitz data as the basis for student projects in a GIS course.
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And yet so many of the discussions in the forum – including this one – are full of people who seem to desire just that.
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But they’re just that - discussions. Nothing else. There has been a tone problem of late, but I’m pretty sure they don’t impact iNat’s product backlog (at least, not negatively).
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Hope mine didn’t come across like that.
I only sent out email to the uni folk because it was a university that was doing it consistently and repeatedly and professors should know better, IMPO.
If I notice middle & high schoolers, mostly I just paste the welcome message, let them know about casual for captive/cultivated, encourage them to explore wild things in nature, and move on. And I specifically stop and skip them when I start to get annoyed because i’m human and that definitly happens around the 30th photo of the same tree in the front of the school but I skip so I don’t get rude xD
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Actually, unfortunately it won’t. I’m one of those professors who has had the unfortunate task of leading a class containing many uninterested students through their participation in a Bioblitz and subsequent activities using iNat. Perhaps unfortunately, the Bioblitz was required for all students participating in this program. The signal to noise ratio was quite low. However, some students did make a serious and rewarding effort on their captures. In large part, this phenomenon is an inevitable consequence of the sometimes contradictory roles of iNat as an educational tool and research tool. But, as someone observed previously on the thread, over time, the chaff falls away leaving the valuable germ.
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I think that sums it up. 
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I’ve found there is a magic word that allows a teacher to pre-select engaged students for a more rewarding experience. It’s called: “Extra Credit.” Some students seem to put more effort into extra credit opportunities than regular graded activities, and they seem to attract primarily the overachievers wanting to secure an A in the class. Because it doesn’t lower their grade if they don’t do it, those who are not interested can opt out of participating thus cutting down on the noise.
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Really nice project. Do you mind if I use it as an example of what can be done with iNaturalist?
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That’s perfectly fine - that’s why I wrote a journal post about it in hopes it may inspire more class projects of that nature!
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I wonder if the act of having to put a prop to show that it’s you taking a the photo can be an unintentional solution. While this can’t work for a lot of things (ie lichen on a tree trunk, a bird, something far off) it does force the observer to think about how they’re focusing their shots (need to make the prop visible), as well as get multiple views.
Another thing teachers can do is show examples of how it can be really really easy to build up observations in one spot. A fallen tree can have lichen, fungi, worms, isopods, fallen leaves, etc. No need to trek to a park to photograph a tree; you can get a wealth of observations just by snapping photos of stuff you find under a large piece of rotten bark or a rock. This may be dependent on the teacher realizing that there’s people who want that data, not just clean photos of a maple tree or bird.
Seeing hundreds of shots with those, it hardly helps the problem, they will still shot something weird with 20 twigs in the shot for you to decide what they’re focusing on (often it’s something gone from the picture), will photograph the same bark with nothing seen to id it, etc. It’s more likely to be in focus, but that’s it (and blurr is not the main problem of mass student observations, it’s usually unided unmarked cultivated plants, each with three duplicates on a user, the whole class repeating it).
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The whole class repeating it at such similar angles that two or more students’ observations literally look like duplicates of one observation.
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I find it funny how little number of organisms they each upload, while having photos of 10 students gathered around a single insect, with time spent on that, they could each find 30-50 unique specimens of different species in close proximity.
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