Transforming science education through research-driven innovation



Designing Citizen Science for Both Science and Education: A Workshop Report


In January 2017, BSCS convened a group of scientists, educators, and technologists with significant experience in citizen science to consider the challenges of designing citizen science projects to achieve ambitious objectives in the areas of both science and education. The workshop was based on the following premise:


Achieving both scientific and educational benefits in a citizen science initiative requires not just a commitment to both, but the expertise and resources to design for both.

The goals of the workshop were to

  1. gather the insights of experienced citizen science project organizers about how to design citizen science projects and platforms for both scientific and educational outcomes and to
  2. organize these insights into a set of recommendations for software developers on how to design online citizen science platforms for both scientific and educational outcomes.

Refer to our press release for more information.

The insights generated at this workshop have been compiled in the following workshop report:


Designing Citizen Science for Both Science and Education: A Workshop Report

Edelson, D. C., Kirn, S. L., & Workshop Participants. (2018). Designing citizen science for both science and education: A workshop report. (Technical Report No. 2018-01). Colorado Springs, CO: BSCS Science Learning.

This workshop is in partnership with



This work was supported by a grant from the Pisces Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Pisces Foundation.