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Open pedagogy and citizen science both aim to elevate individual contributions to science and education to the greater global community: the first through a collective enterprise to communicate knowledge, and the second through collective participation in science. Here we present strategies for utilizing the overlap between open pedagogy and citizen science approaches to empower students and improve learning, inclusion, and accessibility. Student-driven education and research can increase engagement with learning. Similarly, student creation of materials promotes engagement with content and ownership. Class products can be used beyond the classroom—for example, in future job or graduate school applications. Contributions to the greater public also motivate civic-minded students to produce materials to enhance future learners' understanding by fostering connections to diverse communities. Teaching models that synergize open education and citizen science approaches involve two prongs: (1) student participation in a citizen science project that contributes data, and (2) communicating the data, results, and implications to stakeholder communities. These implementations can range from simple (e.g., pairing one project with social media posts) to complex (e.g., multiple, often interconnected, citizen science projects where students produce instructions, best practices, and other communications). We must overcome many challenges to achieve broader acceptance of this pedagogy, including the re-creation of curricular standards in higher education and Retention, Promotion, and Tenure criteria. Nonetheless, we can leverage a combination of open pedagogy and citizen science to help students develop skills to assess and communicate scientific information effectively, and thus advance the next generation of global leaders.
McKenney et al. (Tue,) studied this question.