INTRODUCTION
As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, declared by the World Health
Organization on 11th of March 2020 (WHO 2020), several
public health strategies have been adopted and applied in Australia,
including restriction on international air travel, case isolation and
home quarantine, social distancing and school closures (Chang et al.
2020). Several schools across the country temporarily closed whilst
other schools were only open for children of essential workers. State
governments encouraged parents to keep their children at home (NCRIS
2020). This resulted in educators from primary to tertiary sectors
needing to transition to online learning. This transition to online
learning significantly hindered delivery of science curriculum that
depends on practical activities to facilitate learning.
Announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Queensland, Australia,
caught Queensland University of Technology’s Allergy Research Group (QUT
ARG) and Corinda State High School (CSHS) in the early stage of
consideration of a joint scientific field activity. Whilst initially
preparing to postpone the project until after the social lockdown
measures had ceased, the idea was formed to restructure the project so
that students could participate in a joint activity from home during
lockdown and in a way that kept students engaged and able to undertake
practical science learning. This led to the development of a small-scale
citizen science project and educational modules using ‘real world’
research concepts and data to facilitate practical and online
learning11 Citizen science refers to a process whereby
volunteers from within the community are able to engage in scientific
research through assisting in the collection of data and sharing
information. These types of projects not only enable the community to
engage in research, but also allow researchers to achieve their broader
research goals (Silvertown 2009; Jordan et al. 2011). With the recent
advancements in digital technology, there is now the potential for
citizen science projects to recruit a larger number of volunteers across
the world (Kobori et al. 2016) and there are an increasing number of
freely available online tools for collecting and visualizing data
(Silvertown 2009; Dickson, Zuckerberg & Bonter 2010). Access to these
facilities coupled with the immediate need for online learning opened an
opportunity for engaging secondary school students in interactive
science learning activities while they were undertaking online school
learning at home.
The ‘Grass Gazers’ citizen science project was designed by the QUT ARG
for the purpose of grassland diversity and phenology research (Davies et
al. 2015; Devadas et al. 2018). The project was developed by the
academic research group and adapted by the CSHS agricultural science
coordinator as a learning tool suitable for use by a group of junior
high school agricultural science students. The adaptation allowed for
examination of the potential for use of this citizen science tool to
engage with students working from home whilst facilitating practical and
online learning. It also provided an opportunity to develop an ongoing
collaboration between tertiary researchers and secondary educators. The
project used online tools to upload botanical and phenological data of
grasses observed by students around their neighborhood or school
surrounds within an urban environment. The students could then access
and visualize all collected data for further educational purposes. This
paper will reflect on the development, implementation, current social
context, and outcomes of this project for the school students, including
the collaboration’s challenges and benefits, how the project could be
improved, and implications for future science learning in schools.