how does it go? “Special kind of swap”
1 Like
This is my favorite suggestion so far. Would love to see something like this implemented.
1 Like
I’m kind of bummed about the idea of just pushing education users to Seek - I really love the concept of citizen science as building actual datasets, and kids (even little ones) usually respond really positively to that, too. It just seems like we could miss some potentially very valuable data if they’re just using Seek to ID and leaving it at that. A more comprehensive tutorial seems like a much preferable alternative. Or warning flags when someone else has to tag it as casual - “It looks like you’ve uploaded a cultivated observation without tagging it. Please try to limit observations to wild plants and animals, and mark other species as “cultivated” on upload.” Maybe there could be a system where 3 warnings where others have to tag it as “casual” gets the account routed back to the tutorial or temporarily locked.
Also, with the idea of building datasets, if the app/website were more clear about the fact that users are actually contributing to real science data and it requires human intervention to fix their errors, kids/beginning users might take it more seriously. Even just modifying the app store description. A lot of people seem to begin using iNat with the idea that they’re using some sort of Instagram for nature photos. Clarification in branding could help.
8 Likes
Well, it doesn’t have anything to do with age. There are some quite young people on here who are great inat users. It’s the duress users that are the issue. It doesn’t seem to help them to be here and it doesn’t help us either.
3 Likes
I just checked the app store description and it clearly addresses how iNat observations add to science, as does the home webpage. Not everybody reads it, but it’s there. (But you are right that many first users think it is Facebook or Instagram for nature photos.)
1 Like
Yeah, I’m not suggesting that the information is unavailable, but rather that the general public is remarkably unlikely to read past the first sentence. That sucks and maybe the onus should be on them but since it’s harder to change those literacy habits than to change the platform’s branding, the optimal intervention point seems clear. Right now it’s “iNaturalist helps you identify the plants and animals around you” and the tagline is just “Connect with Nature.” On the website, the first thing you see (and therefore the only thing most people will process) is “Explore and share your observations from the natural world.” I can definitely see how that would bring to mind an app like Yonder, where sharing is meant in a social media sense. There’s a fine line to walk, of course, between getting people interested and being clear about the scientific elements. But I think fronting the science more is maybe one way to help users come in taking it more seriously. Maybe the “post observation” button could include a phrase or verification window that says “By posting this as a “verifiable” observation, I acknowledge that I am including it in realtime data sets about the ecology of this location and can influence field researchers.” (More accessible than that, obv, but you get the gist.)
Well, it doesn’t have anything to do with age. There are some quite young people on here who are great iNat users. It’s the duress users that are the issue. It doesn’t seem to help them to be here and it doesn’t help us either.
@charlie, sorry, I think I had conflated the push for educators & families to use Seek with the idea that it was meant to catch younger users. I know that currently duress users often hurt more than they help, but I think assuming that duress users can never provide beneficial data and relegating them to an app that doesn’t collect info isn’t the best approach. Obviously some forms of duress (grading on numbers of observations, for example) are really an issue, but the more the app aggressively fronts reminders that you’re messing with real science, not just with your teacher that you like to harass, the more I think even duress observations could be directed into being useful.
3 Likes
Sorry, two different things going on. I was talking about duress users on Inaturalist but seek is indeed meant for kids to use.
Maybe others would disagree but I’d go so far as to say duress users are adding little to no net benefit to the site and also get little benefit themselves from being assigned to use inat.
2 Likes
I’m not really sure how the teachers having all their students set up an account and then having to meet an observation quota is actually teaching them anything at all. I’m sure they’re almost all very familiar with installing an app, taking photos, and posting them online… which is all many of them seem to be doing with iNat.
I recall exercises in school science classes at different ages, where we went outside to observe nature and try to identify organisms. Back in the stone age before smart phones were everywhere… the 80s and 90s! There were lessons on differentiating taxa, collecting specimens, doing sketches, bringing stuff back to the classroom to examine under a microscope, etc.
If thirty kids all go out and take a photo of the same dandelion in the sidewalk at the same time and then all upload it to iNat, what is the educational benefit to them? How does that benefit iNat in any way?
If the issue is that the kids don’t feel engaged unless they’re all out taking photos, that’s fine. They don’t even need to install the iNat app for that. Why not have the kids send their photos to the teacher, who can then go through them and see which kids followed the assignment and pick out some quality unique ones to submit to iNat. The teacher can walk the kids through how to use the app and the website on the smartboard, tv… whatever they can all see. Any kids who actually have a genuine interest in creating an account and using it themselves can do it on their own accord.
It does seem like the current problem stems from students pushing their assignment work off on the iNat community to handle their identification work, and the teachers pushing their supervision and grading work off onto other iNat users as well.
11 Likes
I try to identify or respond to ‘bad’ observations if I see they are posted from a school or young person even if they posted it as a joke human picture. They get to see that there actually are people engaged in the app. We all start somewhere. Either they will stick around and figure it out or will be gone quickly. I think the solution is to work on tools for identifiers to go through id’s quickly and maybe in a batch mode
5 Likes
The suggestion was for 50 obs before you can create a project. It would only affect the teacher in this instance. The main reason for me in this would be to create a level of engagement with the teacher before they start dragging in duress users. I know I had that engagement at the time I started, and I didn’t start encouraging and showing others how to use iNat until I had.
5 Likes
Respectfully, I disagree with this take very much - I think it’s a lack of awareness that there’s work being done or a community who takes that burden on, rather than intentional shirking.
I agree that when all the kids take an observation of the same organism, that’s totally useless for everyone. That’s why I like the idea of requiring educators to set clearer guidelines that each student should find something unique to post, separate from their classmates. But @danaleeling’s circumstances are a great example of information that could be incredibly useful and would be lost to the datasets if students just used Seek (which probably would also fail to ID well).
But I’m pretty certain that in most cases the kids aren’t being required to ID, just to observe. Likewise, the teachers won’t be seeing the posting of observations as part of their grading or supervision burden. The supervision burden from their perspective is much more likely to be watching the kids as they run around taking observations and making sure no one is roughhousing, sneaking off, vandalizing, etc. The work that people do IDing on iNat isn’t reducing their grading burden because they’ll still be personally assessing that students have posted observations etc. and using this as part of a broader curriculum unit that problem includes written work/assessments. That’s why I think the best intervention point is helping everyone, teacher and student, understand that there is a real scientific impact to careless IDs and observations so the teachers involved realize that using iNaturalist adds additional supervision needs beyond the obvious ones and is creating work for volunteers, many of whom seem to lose patience quickly.
I think a lot of this stems from the extreme push to incorporate more tech in the classroom - there are so many mini-grants right now for tech devices, and a lot of teachers see kids constantly absorbed on their smartphones and think “maybe I can harness that energy and attention if there’s an app related to my unit.”
At first glance, there’s little to suggest that IDs would be “work” for others - rather, I think the layperson’s assumption is “there are people/nerds out there who will enjoy seeing and IDing these things, if they want to, and if they don’t want to they won’t.” I like @kimssight’s approach for this, although I recognize that increases the level of required engagement. But any reminders that there are real people involved and potential negative effects can offset careless behavior. As @sgene mentioned, it’s a more effective intervention to create changes on the iNat side than to just appeal/hope for different behavior.
8 Likes
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.
10 Likes
Ideally teacher-sponsored projects should be a project category. Can a project be defined to include all obs made by listed participants for the next month? And could identifiers have an option to exclude obs from such projects?
To make this work well:
- iNat will need to make it extremely easy for non-tech-savvy teachers to create projects for their students (something like a “duplicate” button for projects with fields to fill in).
- observers who appear to be duress users should be asked if they are part of a class project and, if so, how can we contact the teacher to help the class use iNat more effectively.
- volunteers (ideally other teachers) should follow up by contacting the teacher and asking him/her to create teacher-sponsored projects for his/her students.
3 Likes
Molanic, you are speaking for a lot of people when you say that. However, the benefits are real. When I wrote to a teacher asking her to give her students a list of nearby wild places, she wrote back that she had done so, but some students did not have good transportation.
She also wrote:
At the beginning of this class many cannot list even 3 native California flowers (poppies excepted). iNaturalist has been a wonderful way to bring these phone addicted, city-raised kids into nature.
The reason I could reach out to this teacher was because she had created projects for her students’ obs. See https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/arth193a-01-earth-life-art-spring-2019
10 Likes
For some reason, bringing the smartphone into the observation and identification process fundamentally changes the dynamic among students today. In some deep way their reality is mediated through their technologies. Although my ethnobotany class has engaged in identification walks throughout the term, the students were far more engaged the day I had them use smartphone based identification apps. My students later did presentations on their observations. A follow-up evaluation of the activity found that the students felt the activity enhanced their learning and use of iNaturalist should be expanded in future terms. Rather than set up a project I chose to follow all of my students. The students are citizen scientists and my role will be essentially that of a supportive mentor and guide even beyond the end of the term.
18 Likes
I read every word in your links, although it was getting hard through the tears in my eyes. What great students you have!
3 Likes
Actually I think many of us can identify with this, as is evident in the discussion of “you know you’re seriously into iNat when.” It’s that feeling that the observation “got away” unless you can “capture” it on your phone. We maybe can do a better job of communicating that just observing is a learning activity too, and will make the next photo shoot better.
4 Likes
under the duress student users, i understand the idea of student to contributing inat user but, in that initial period, it’s still a class assignment? so there’s some teacher responsibility. i thought i’d chime in (very late, apologies) because there’s a difference in a bunch of students posting the same deadnettle (terre haute) and the students posting classmate photos where the classmate is showing a hand sign that’s hate speech (this has happened 4-5 times since april).
i don’t really care about the bunch of deadnettle as an identifier - deal with it or not as your preference there. the hate signs are an issue like these are happening during the school day so hey teacher? take care of your students.
i guess my point here is a) are there guidelines for teachers that could note this and b) is there a suggested flag? i personally don’t care to engage with a lulzy kid, nor am i sure everyone knows that’s a hate sign. the teachers haven’t rejected their responsibility but they are putting kids on a website with other people expecting robins or a nice fern and i don’t think many have thought that through.
(this is not an easy thing!)
2 Likes
Under flags there is a category marked offensive / inappropriate you can use.
I’ve found a couple of these as well, it is a struggle to deal with, as the sign you are referring to means one thing if you are a 13 year old boy, and means something totally different to others due to it being co-opted by groups to be offensive.
4 Likes
I’ve described it to my husband as facebook for people for prefer plants and animals to people. But he knows I’m joking (mostly).
5 Likes