PROJECT DESIGN
The collaborative ‘Grass Gazers’ citizen science project was designed to geolocate, categorize and indicate flowering behavior of grasses around students’ homes through an activity named “Tracking Grass Species” (Fig. 2). Before the students began undertaking the practical activity, it was important that they had background knowledge on the project and safety information as well as instructions on how to undertake the data collection. The QUT ARG provided the agricultural science coordinator with a set of resources (documented versions of the developed risk assessments and the modules on pollen identification, tracking grass species, measuring field greenness, using a citizen science data entry platform and forensic palynology) covering this information. The science coordinator then used this information to generate online class lessons that incorporated many teaching tools (e.g. questions, activities, images using simplified language) to help the students understand the project and the risks involved. This was done using an online platform called ‘Stile’ (Stile Education 2019) with functionality that included uploading videos, multi-choice and open questions, mind maps, an open canvas function to annotate images and audio commentary. Once the students were familiar with this important safety information, they were then able to begin the practical component of this project. The project required the students to look outside their household or around their local neighborhood, under supervision, and identify grass species using an online data collection platform, Epicollect5 (EpiCollect5 2020). QUT ARG developed a project on this platform with an online survey that asked about the grass species observed (Appendix). This information included key phenological characteristics and images that would enable the students and the researchers to identify grasses that the students were observing. As the students submitted data and photo images into Epicollect5, they were able to visualize data collected by themselves and their school mates. This online platform also allows the student to visualize the geographical location of all data on a map. The data collected can be exported by the students for further educational activities developed by their science teachers.