This thread has me imagining a free, self-guided iNat course on how to observe and photograph different taxa.
What do you think about a free, self-guided course like this?
It could include a gamification system, like an image of a pie, where every time you complete a module on a different major taxon, you fill in a slice of the pie, and your goal is to āfinish the pieā.
(Sorry if you prefer cake over pie! )
iNaturalist isnāt meant to be an entomology degree or a botany degree.
Iām not suggesting that we have the resources to do this; itās more of a thought experiment.
What do you think? Your feedback and ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Interesting concept. Where would a āself-guided iNat courseā exist? Who would host it? Who would organize, supervise, and edit the content (which would necessarily be derived from multiple authors)? Iām not equiped to begin answering such questions.
It seems to me the course wouldnāt (shouldnāt) be iNat specific. It would be more about how to photographically document taxa in a manner that supports science over art. As an amateur photographer, Iām as guilty as anyone else of wanting to make a pretty photograph. For the sake of iNat I try to get the documentary shots first. Mostly
I also think such a course should indicate the type of equipment best suited to documenting various taxa.
I think there are some guides on how to do this, but that it can be very clade-specific! Thereās no general ārightā way to photograph an organism to tell it from distinct related species. But in terms of a self-paced self-guided course, maybe a wiki is a good way to start? Here was an attempt: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/observing-identifying-wildlife-wiki/
Sounds like a great idea. Iād be excited to take a course like that. We could all use some pointers on how to help our observations facilitate more reliably accurate IDs and be more useful to the wider community.
This seems like something that might go along with the Seek app. It is already a somewhat gamified version of iNat. Perhaps some of your suggestions could help with future functionality of that app.
I have thought about this before and I do believe it is a good idea. The problem is, that a guide like this only really works if it achieves the right balance of detail and with how diverse life is, that is not an easy problem to solve. Too little detail and the guide would just be too general to be of any use for anything or would lead to confusion, too much and then youād have to know what you are photographing before uploading the observation to iNat.
I think for a few common taxa (and paraphyletic groups), a centralised guide with everything in one place would help, very much though. From my experience identifying unknowns: Especially Basidiomycota and trees.
I donāt know how feasible this is, but what I am picturing is something very basic. Like, not getting down into the weeds of what you really need to do in order to be able to identify every (or almost every species), but just giving it in extremely broad strokes.
For example, for roses, it helps to have a photo that shows the stem, including the prickles (thorns), and a photo that clearly shows a whole leaf all the way down to how it attaches to the stem. There are other identifying details you might need for some species, but just these two things would dramatically reduce the number of hopelessly unidentifiable rose observations.
Or you could go even broader and just say: For flowering plants, get a photo of the leaves, including how they attach to the stem. This is not going to be sufficient for every species, but it will greatly improve the chances of getting something identifiable.
That could come across as erecting barriers for those with limited budgets. I would rather the course focus on optimizing the use of equipment that people are likely already to have.
OK. I have a very limited budget. Iām all for optimizing the equipment I already have. How does that preclude me from recognizing what I am best able to document given what equipment I already have?
eBird has a free course like this, called EBird Essentials. Although that may be more about how to use the platform effectively rather than how to best collect data - the two are related though imo as part of using a citizen science platform effectively is learning how to make observations that are most meaningful to science and are more likely to be identified. I think any major citizen science platform should have some sort of introductory video/course.
I think itās not very feasible to have an iNat course that gets too specific on best photo angles or best equipment for different taxa as, well, you could be observing literally any species on Earth, versus platforms that are more limited in scope like eBird, BugGuide, Bumblebee Watch, or any number of others. The angles youād need may differ on a genus by genus level, and as others have mentioned equipment can be a huge barrier to novices and hobbyists (though mentioning what professionals use can still be valuable!). But I think some basics about how to effectively observe and document nature/natural phenomena, and how to collect good metadata that will make your observation useful to science, are certainly within the realm of possibility.
(This being said, if experts in a particular field would like to contribute their knowledge and advice for photographing/documenting certain taxa, perhaps these could get a series of written articles? One a week?)
I am not so sure about a courseāseems cool, but also seems like it would take a great deal of planning and effort in order to be taxonomically comprehensive, even at a very high levelābut I do wonder if a well-produced, ongoing series of short videos on major taxa would be almost as good.
for documenting taxa-level best practices, i think this is the way to do it. get an expert observer for a particular set of taxa and make a āthis is how i observeā video. repeat for different taxa.
I like the idea of getting various taxon experts to either make videos or write a guide (with photos) - people could choose which taxa they are interested in, rather than slogging through an entire course to find the info they want. But there would be a single link to get you to a general observer course for beginners, with a list of links for more specific info.
For example, Iām interested in stink bugs, and been photographing them for awhile. I just found out that to get species IDs, I need to flip them over and photograph the bottom of the abdomen. I wish I had known that 2 years ago! OTOH, thatās really niche info, that should not be included in a general course. Whereas āphotos of leaves with point of attachment to stemā or ātop and side photo of insectsā would go into a general guide/course.
Whatever it is, I really hope it wonāt just be videos. I hate trying to learn anything even remotely technical from a video. Itās far too slow, and then I still have to pause and repeat the parts I need to see in detail. Itās also fairly useless for anything you want to be able to keep as a reference.
I will read a journal post with pictures.
If I do skim a video, I will dip in and out - and it will be with the sound off to avoid obligatory music.
Probably need to offer both, for different learning styles.
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