A hands-on workshop about how to design citizen science investigations using the nQuire platform (nquire.org.uk) took place on the 6th March 2020 at the Open University UK.
Attendees, mainly from a range of non-academic organisations such as museums, health care, environmental sciences and journalists, had the opportunity to learn about the nQuire platform and how to author their own personally meaningful investigations including piloting a first version of their investigation.
nQuire is a platform developed by the Open University in partnership with the BBC. It has been designed to support the process of setting up, managing, and implementing citizen science projects from start to the end. It includes a dynamic toolkit that allows for data collection from a range of resources including sounds, images, text, and sensor data while a process of approvals ensures that all live projects are ethically designed, approved and checked.
The activity has been funded by UKRI as part of the project “EDUcating Citizens and organisations in Citizen Science methodologies” (EduCS) that aims to develop citizen science capacity in organisations not normally involved in citizen science, such as the BBC and the Met Office.
Amongst other project activities, we are currently working with academics from the University of Liverpool and University of Manchester to design a nQuire mission about climate anxiety which will be promoted by the BBC in the next month. Later in the year we will be working with the BBC to develop a mission about heatwaves and how they may affect people’s everyday lives.
For more details contact: Christothea.herodotou@open.ac.uk