EGU22-6970
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6970
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Analysis of individual learning outcomes of students and teachers in the citizen science project TeaTime4Schools

Anna Wawra1, Martin Scheuch2, Bernhard Stürmer2, and Taru Sanden1
Anna Wawra et al.
  • 1Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, Department for Soil and Plant Health (BGPE), Vienna, Austria (anna.wawra@ages.at)
  • 2University College for Agrarian and Environmental Pedagogy, Vienna, Austria

Only a few of the increasing number of citizen science projects set out to determine the projects impact on diverse learning outcomes of citizen scientists. However, besides pure completion of project activities and data collection, measurable benefits as individual learning outcomes (ILOs) (Phillips et al. 2014) should reward voluntary work.

Within the citizen science project „TeaTime4Schools“, Austrian students in the range of 13 to 18 years collected data as a group activity in a teacher guided school context; tea bags were buried into soil to investigate litter decomposition. In an online questionnaire a set of selected scales of ILOs (Phillips et al. 2014, Keleman-Finan et al. 2018, Wilde et al. 2009) were applied to test those ILOs of students who participated in TeaTime4Schools. Several indicators (scales for project-related response, interest in science, interest in soil, environmental activism, and self-efficacy) were specifically tailored from these evaluation frameworks to measure four main learning outcomes: interest, motivation, behavior, self-efficacy. In total, 106 valid replies of students were analyzed. In addition, 21 teachers who participated in TeaTime4Schools, answered a separate online questionnaire that directly asked about quality and liking of methods used in the project based on suggested scales about learning tasks of University College for Agricultural and Environmental Education (2015), which were modified for the purpose of this study. Findings of our research will be presented.

How to cite: Wawra, A., Scheuch, M., Stürmer, B., and Sanden, T.: Analysis of individual learning outcomes of students and teachers in the citizen science project TeaTime4Schools, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-6970, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6970, 2022.