Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy

Abstract

This paper describes a model for designing and running citizen science projects that has been developed at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology over the last two decades. The CLO Citizen Science Project Design and Implementation Model was developed over time by a group of individuals with expertise in education, population biology, conservation biology, information science, computational statistics, and program evaluation. The article focuses on and describes the nine stages of project development, supplemented by practical examples.