by Jamie Dorst, REU, Carnegie Mellon Hi! My name is Jamie Dorst, and I’m a new Research Assistant on the Learning to See, Seeing to Learn project. Most of my responsibilities so far have been content related, such as creating an updated landing page, annotating illustrations, and creating an expansive Trichoptera info sheet for the family level training led by Stroud Research Center last November. I worked with Tara to put together a handout for participants showcasing all the caddisflies in our collection. I’ve really enjoyed my time on the team so far! My latest project has been to create an interactive digital dichotomous key, which has been really interesting. Analog keys are very commonly used, but we felt that a key utilizing our resources could be extremely useful. We wanted to make a key that was easy to navigate, and incorporated our images and information. I started by laying a key out based on the Stroud key, placed our images into it, and then created clickable pop ups that people can use to help move through the key. With this tool, people can identify their insects, and simultaneously learn about the characteristics they have. It’s been super interesting for me to work on this and learn about how to make it really well designed. The next step is to create an interaction for the actual website, which I’ll be working on soon. In the meantime, here's a preview of drafts of a few of the images! by Jessica Roberts, postdoctoral researcher, HCII In the fall of 2016 we launched a survey to citizen science water quality trainers throughout the country. We wanted to get a better sense of the state-of-the-field: What do trainings look like? Who are the trainers, and who are the volunteers? What materials and resources do they use?
The primary goal of this survey was to provide information about potential users and their needs as we began the redesign efforts expanding macroinvertebrates.org to the full 150-specimen collection (to be released early in 2019!). In the process, we gained valuable insight about the large community of educators and organizations engaged in this work, which we have consolidated into a technical report. This report, published through CMU, presents data on six key areas of focus:
You can access the report through the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science at this link. Special thanks to all the team members who contributed to this project, particularly our partners at Stroud Water Research Center, former postdoc Lauren Allen, and undergraduate research assistants Grace Guo and Aiqi Cui. by Tara Muenz, Stroud Water Research Center Stroud Center Educators presented once again on the alpha site, this time at the 47th North American Association for Environmental Education Annual Conference (NAAEE) in Spokane, Washington. In attendance were over 1,200 educators from across the globe, merging together on the theme of ‘EE a Force for the Future.’ Our reveal of the alpha site first occurred at the ‘Share Fair’ where attendees could interact with our education staff about education programming and learn about tools to promote stewardship and knowledge of fresh water. Attendees were able to cruise through the alpha site at our table and were encouraged to attend our upcoming presentation. We heard many ‘oohs and ahhs’ when seeing the site with encouraging remarks already how this site will enhance their role as educators when connecting students to the world of aquatic macroinvertebrates. Tara Muenz, Stroud's Assistant Director of Education with support from Steve Kerlin gave a 45-minute presentation and teaser on the alpha site to over 30 conference attendees. This hands-on presentation demonstrated not only the capabilities of this incredible site, but also engaged the audience in a conversation on tips for training and learning the how to identify macroinvertebrates with audiences coming from diverse backgrounds. We also revealed forthcoming training support and activities such as the ‘ID FOCUS WORKSHEETS’ which are meant to do just that, FOCUS! Starting with morphology (Tip # 1), we dove deep into the world of Trichoptera (Caddisfly Order) and focused on the Hydropsychidae Family (“water-spirit”) with a simple new activity you can do with students or volunteers and which gets them started in ID with caddisflies. We shared the list of the materials needed: We are also starting to develop as a set of training supports using site imagery, a tool that we call ‘ID FOCUS SHEETS’ which guide noticing and point to key characters on the morphology of an Order (and Family, in this case). Attendees also learned of super cool tools to come (i.e. Family-level ID cards and practice tests).
At the end of our presentation we asked for feedback and got many thumbs up! One teacher from South Carolina said ‘This is a game-changer! Combined with live insects, ID cards, and keys, this will revolutionize the way students learn, it’s incredible.’ One attendee who works with mosquitos in Florida was inspired in many ways to use the site when teaching students of all ages about mosquitos and is eager to make some ID sheets on this Family of Culicidae (mosquitos)! The presentation generated excitement, and educators left feeling more empowered and able to support ID work. They loved the ID Focus sheets, the cards, and the clear guidance and structure to learning and teaching. What’s next for the Stroud Center team? Time to create more of the Focus sheets, get them into the hands of others to use, and oh right, another presentation! We’ll see you in Montana next week at the 2018 MEA-MFT Educator Conference where we’ll be presenting on another NSF grant focused on the Net-spinning Caddisfly and, you guessed it, showing the new macroinvertebrates.org site! By Tara Muenz, Stroud Water Research Center Last winter we found a new use for the amazingly detailed imagery on macroinvertebrates.org. One of our Stroud Center educators and retired science teacher, Vince O’Donnell, realized students could benefit from 3D models of macroinvertebrates as teaching tools. Since none existed, we helped a team of high school engineering and art students create some! Check out our article in County Lines Magazine describing how we used macroinvertebrates.org to point out finer details of the taxa they were creating so the designers knew exactly what the characteristic looked like (e.g. wing pads on a mayfly, antennae structure of a stonefly, how the legs are poised, etc.). It was extremely helpful to be able to zoom into the character of the taxa and show students exactly how they needed to alter their 3D design model.
The project was a great success, and we are continuing to work with students to create more models this year! by Tara Muenz, Stroud Water Research Center Stroud Center educators and grant partners presented the next phase of the site to over 30 watershed educators from across the Commonwealth at the bi-annual ‘Dive Deeper’ conference in Harrisburg, PA. Through a 40-minute interactive session Assistant Director of Education, Tara Muenz, presented background on the project, and the what, why and how of the next phase of the site. With laptops, smart devices, keys, ID cards and preserved specimens, the goal was to show the benefits of using this kind of digital tool when training others and when learning how to identify with more fun and ease! Many attendees came from backgrounds of both formal and informal educators including state park and extension staff, teachers, trout unlimited chapters, nature centers and more. Kicking it off, we showed the home page. Immediately you could see the excitement in the attendees faces when over 100 images of aquatic macroinvertebrates came ‘live’ staring right at you. This view of the home page was our launch point for two activities to engage the attendees on how to use the website themselves and for training others. Activity #1 focused on flowing through the site an general navigation: Activity #2 asked attendees to compare two Orders and two Families within these orders. We needed more time for the activities, but had great feedback so far on the utility of the site with suggestions on how to make this site more useful such as including emergence times and connections of these taxa to species of flora.
Our next presentation will be in Spokane, Washington on October 10th (5:05-5:45pm) at the North American Association for Environmental Education’s annual conference. Come see us! by Jessy Ma, NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates intern, Brown University During my time here at CMU, my main focus was to conduct website usability tests and take what I learned from them to design a mobile companion app. At the same time, however, I got abundant exposure to the research process and the intricacies involved in conducting successful research. Things I did outside of designing the app included:
by Jessy Ma, NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates intern, Brown University One of my main projects this summer was to design and develop a mobile companion app for macroinvertebrates.org. Initially, I had to decide whether to make a reference app that would essentially give information like the website does or make a game that would allow people to practice identification. I got feedback from my mentors, and at this point I had also started conducting usability tests for the alpha version of the website, so I got a feel for what users would use the site for and what was most important to them. I decided to do a reference app that would be a simplified offline version of the site, since this would be most helpful to people doing identification out in the streams, where Wi-Fi and cellular service can be unreliable. In order to scale the site down into a mobile app that can be used offline, I had to figure out which features on the site were most important to include and how to include them without compromising user experience. I iterated my design a few times based on feedback from my mentors and from website usability tests, and once I was happy enough with the design, I conducted usability tests with the Young Naturalists at Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. Here is an example of how one screen (the full specimen view) changed throughout the process: The changes I made after the Young Naturalists' feedback are the final iteration displayed on my poster, which I presented at a poster session with all the other HCII summer REUs. After I had already submitted my poster, I had a meeting with the designers of the website and made further changes to the prototype, which can be found here: https://marvelapp.com/db804b9/.
Because it has yet to undergo usability testing, the current design is not final. Next steps would be to do more usability tests on the prototype, make any necessary changes again, and finally develop the app. I had started development using React Native, a framework created by Facebook for building apps using JavaScript and React. However, the design has changed drastically, my time on this project is ending, and I am a beginner to app development, so the best way for this app to be built successfully is if someone with app development experience takes over. Once we find that person, they will pick up where I left off and hopefully turn my design into reality. by Jessy Ma, NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates intern, Brown University I conducted 8 usability tests for the alpha version of macroinvertebrates.org. Participants consisted primarily of people who had previously expressed in a survey that they were interested in usability testing for the website, so most of them were relatively advanced in macroinvertebrate identification. My interviews were conducted in four main parts: opening background questions, unguided exploration of the site, site tutorial, and closing questions. Overall, participants gave positive feedback. Some of them had used the older version of the site, and others were seeing macroinvertebrates.org for the first time. Most thought the site was easy to use and especially liked how interactive and high-quality the photos were.
Many suggestions for improvements to the site were made, shown below. The most commonly suggested changes were adding tooltips (hover boxes) to the set of view control buttons in the upper right, making the blue plus sign more intuitive, making the expanded character list more noticeable, and making the flip arrow button more intuitive. Many of these usability issues could be solved by having a site tutorial video or popup tutorial boxes to guide users through the site when they visit for the first time. Certain features of the site that often went unnoticed or were hard to find, such as the blue plus sign, expanded character list, and flip arrow button, would benefit from redesign. Changes were constantly being made to the website, so some features had already changed by the time I conducted my last usability test. For example, the expanded character list was moved to the Diagnostic Characters tab, and glossary hyperlinks were added to the overviews and expanded character lists. Some people requested that certain information be added to the site. Multiple people wanted a ruler/scale to show size reference, more information about life span and different life stages, and location/distribution maps. People also pointed out that the site’s information is so thorough that it may be overwhelming for beginners. Overall, however, people were very happy with the site, said it would be useful to them in their work, and were excited to share it. by Jessica Roberts, postdoctoral research fellow, CMU After several months of development and redesign in response to feedback from user testing on the demonstration version of the site, we have begun testing the alpha version of the expanded macroinvertebrates.org. On July 21 we traveled to Maryland where our partners at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources hosted an introduction to benthic macroinvertebrates training. Participants gathered at the science lab of a local community college to learn about and practice identifying some of the most common orders in the area. Trainers Dan and Sara introduced participants to the website as they practiced noticing key diagnostic characters on preserved and live specimens. They also used the site to identify a "mystery specimen" in an unmarked vial. Though it was pouring rain, some intrepid participants went down to the stream to try their hand at sampling and sorting specimens streamside. We were able to observe participants using macro.org individually and in groups as they learned about the common macroinvertebrates in their area. Through thinkaloud interviews, an identification quiz, and focus group feedback we were able to take away key insights for how we can continue improving the site to work for a variety of users.
by Jessica Roberts, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University In June I traveled to London for the International Conference of the Learning Sciences, this year presented as part of the London Festival of Learning, to present our work on the cognitive task analysis (CTA) studies conducted with eight entomology experts in Phase 1 of this project. Our subjects ranged in expertise from early career scientists to experienced citizen science trainers to professional entomologists with over 20 years of experience doing macroinvertebrate ID. We asked each expert to identify three specimens to the lowest taxonomic level they felt comfortable (typically genus), using whatever resources they had. Our analysis focused on strategy shifts: how did experts combine multiple kinds of knowing and observing in order to complete this task? While all the experts used at least one dichotomous key at some point, they rarely went step-by-step through all the couplets associated with a specimen in a single key. Instead, they used prior knowledge, informed colleagues, multiple keys, and even Internet searches to find the information they needed to move the identification forward in the most efficient and strategic way possible. They also knew how to look at the specimen -- whether at a particular angle, in a certain light, or with appropriate magnification -- to quickly see the features they needed to confirm an identification. Newcomers to taxonomic ID don't have access to the same variety of resources, nor do they necessarily know when a different resource or way of looking at a specimen will help them find the necessary information faster. Understanding experts' strategy shifts in identification can help us know what kinds of supports we need to build into our expanded version of our website as well as inform us when and where such supports need to be accessible to novice users. To convey this knowledge to our design team and various stakeholders, we created multiple representations of the expert task processes. The most fruitful representation is a diagram we call Shared Externalization of Expertise, or SEE, which maps moves toward an ID as steps down and strategic shifts as moves to the right. This spatial layout of the ID process helps us see where a particular tool or strategy is limited and identify the break points where a novice (without additional resources) might flounder. These SEE diagrams have helped us understand the design space and convey information challenges to our co-design partners. The poster presenting this work generated great discussions about how we can make sense of expert practices to design for learners who are not seeking to become full disciplinary experts but rather to develop "vernacular expertise" in order to be proficient citizen scientists. Roberts, J., Crowley, K., & Louw, M. (2018) Creating a Visual Representation of Expert Strategies to Inform the Design of Digital Tools for Citizen Science. In Proc. of the 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences. London, UK. |
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