Tag Archives: Education Research

Education Research: Meet Katie!

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Katie takes a break for a hike along the Oregon Coast, at Cascade Head.

Katie takes a break for a hike along the Oregon Coast at Cascade Head.

Who is Katie?

Katie Woollven is a Marine Resource Management grad student, working with Dr. Shawn Rowe in the Free-choice Learning Lab at Oregon State University. For her Master’s thesis project, Katie gets to chat with select COASST participants about their perspectives on their role in science and resource management.

Where has she been?

After receiving her B.S. in marine biology from Texas A&M, Katie worked as a field biologist collecting mosquitoes for a bird study, as a fisheries observer in Alaska, and as an intertidal lab tech before shifting gears to focus on education research. Working with the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Science Under Sail Program and an NOAA-funded community-based marine debris removal project sparked her current interest in nature of science learning and citizen science.

What is she thinking about and exploring in her research?

“The big, overarching questions for my grad studies are: What kind of learning does or can happen in citizen science programs?  How can we design citizen science programs to benefit science, volunteers, and society?,” says Katie. “COASST is a long-term citizen science program with a diverse group of participants to help us understand how/if citizen science impacts participants and the greater community,” she adds. And the best part, we asked? “I’m excited to hear what COASSTers have to say!”

Education Research On-the-road: Ben Haywood

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Select COASSTers have received an email from Ben Haywood, PhD Candidate at the Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments, Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina, about his citizen science research project. On Friday, we had the chance to meet Ben face-to-face!

Trial focus group with Ben, Charlie, Liz and students.

Trial focus group with Ben (front), L-R: Charlie, Liz, Stephanie, Matt, Tom, Chelsea, Jessica.

Ben’s project? “My research investigates volunteer participation in citizen science programs like COASST. Specifically, it aims to explore the nature of relationships between people, places, and the natural environment.”

The clickers! (Sometimes used to test large lectures, but Ben's questions, thankfully, are not about content).

The clickers! (Sometimes used to test large lectures at the UW, “but!” our students say, “Ben’s questions are about what you think, not what you know”).

And the next steps put Ben on-the-road, visiting a bunch of coastal communities from Washington to California. Which beaches will Ben visit? What will he eat? Who will he meet? These, and other stories will be posted on Ben’s blog – take a look.