Integrating Open and Citizen Science into Active Learning Approaches in Higher Education

The project consortium is composed of partners with complementary profiles: 4 HEIs (Aalborg University, Tallinn University, University of Oulu, University of Bordeaux), 1 SME (Web2Learn) and the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER). The partnership is well balanced geographically: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, and LIBER which, while located in the Netherlands, has a pan-European reach.

The project objectives are to:

1. Problematize the social impact of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as knowledge creation, sharing and (re-) use ecosystems in the digital economy and to better situate their role in current demands for civic engagement, societal impact and learning opportunities for all.

2. Develop a pedagogical foundation based on well-proven active learning pedagogies for open/citizen science practice with the aim to encourage creativity and skill development, and to increase knowledge dissemination among citizen scientists in a pedagogically sound way

3. Upskill HE academic and library staff and students through the exposure to contemporary trends in public engagement (such as open and citizen science) as a means to critically reflect on pedagogical models conveying active citizenship and social participation.

4. Enrich HE teaching, learning and training resources on active learning pedagogies (problem-based learning, game-based learning, maker education, crowdsourcing education, inquiry-based learning) with open and citizen science initiatives as demonstrations of current trends that claim an active role of citizens in decision making and governance.

5. Bring together target stakeholders and external stakeholders, in order to address the widest possible audience, raising awareness on societal impact from Open Science (OS) and Citizen Science (CS) inside and outside HEIs, thus maximizing the impact of the project outputs.