I agree that the “pushing off of work” on to other iNat users that I was referring to is not necessarily intentional. A lot of it does stem from starting to use the platform without really understanding it though. There have been cases where teachers assigned kids to make 20 observations or get 20 research grade observations to whole classrooms, where there was seemingly no follow up to review those observations. Kids were taking photos of fruit at the supermarket, taxidermy animals at museums, photos of signs with animals on them at nature centers, their classmates (then labeling them as apes or donkeys), etc. Some of those observations can stay up for days until other iNat users go in and flag them and explain why it’s not allowed. I think the kids are supposed to be at least 13 to create an iNat account as well, but it seems like many aren’t. There are plenty of kids younger than that are actually mature enough to use the site properly, but they’re more likely to start using it on their own because they’re actually interested in nature.
I just fail to see the educational benefit of assigning kids to just take the pictures and hit submit. They can observe with their eyes and take photos to review and work on their identification skills, without having to submit every photo they take to the iNat platform.