Colleagues and I have recently had a chapter published in an edited collection (Curtis et al., 2017).
Led by Dr Vickie Curtis, and reporting findings from her PhD thesis (Curtis, 2015), this chapter explores processes of learning within online citizen science projects.
In particular, the chapter presents evidence as to why citizen scientists register on projects, but also, crucially, what makes them stay and become productive members of a distributed research project.
Social technologies in use
In the chapter we argue that digital technologies are profoundly social in use. They are developed and defined by participants who learn through iterative processes of participation.