Welcome and Introduction to the course
Welcome to "Typologies of Citizen Science". This course has been designed for the citizen science practitioner and research community by members of the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) research group at University College London (UCL).
We start the course with an introduction to what typologies are and why they are a useful tool in citizen science, and attempt to classify a few citizen science activities together. We will progress to examining some of the challenges of classifying citizen science projects.
We will then go on to explore three typologies in detail: firstly, one developed by Wiggins and Crowston which classifies different projects by different types; secondly, the well known “5C’s” by Shirk et al, which examines how professional and citizen scientists work together; thirdly, Haklay’s “levels of participation”. We'll also take a quick look at some historical academic background, namely "Arnstein's Ladder of Citizen Participation", a paper from the 1960s which laid the groundwork for several typologies today.
At the end of each section will be a short, non-assessed quiz or activity which allows you to record your thoughts or check your understanding.
At the end of the module will be a 10 question assessed quiz. If you get 50% or more on this quiz, you will receive a certificate to say you have passed this module on typologies.
It is anticipated that this module should take you between 1 and 2 hours. If you would like to explore the subject matter further, we have offered a list of sources and acknowledgements and of further reading you may wish to do.
In this very short video, you will find a welcome message from the course lecturer, Muki Haklay