 Generally dry day on Wednesday. Welcome back to another session of Domains 21 at the OER by Domains 21 conference. I am joined today by Christo Thea Rodota from the Open University as well as Nashua Ishmael from the Open University. Welcome to both of you. Thank you. Now you all will be talking about how you can facilitate how facilitation by experts support learning and online citizen science in particular the case of Enquirer which I am quite interested in. So without any further ado I'll remove myself and let the professionals speak. So good morning and this is my name is Nashua and this work or the presentation we are going to try to answer two questions within the Enquirer platform. What do learners learn and how the educational experts can support this learning. And so we start first with my colleague Thea. So it's down to you Thea, where you go through the first of the work. Hi, thanks for that. So I'm going to talk you through a bit about Enquirer. So Enquirer is a citizen science platform that has been designed at the Open University in the UK. It has the citizens or the participants in the center of the citizen science activity. We wanted to enable people to set up and manage their own investigations in an easy way using Enquirer. And even if people do not have any research skills or any previous experience, they could go on Enquirer experiment with the tool and the options there and then get support from the Enquirer team to design and make life their own citizen science investigation. You can access Enquirer at Enquirer.org.uk. And the process of setting up projects is very easy. After you register, you can follow the steps and the guidance given there and you can set up your citizen science project. You always have the option of piloting the project with whoever you want to and get feedback to improve it. And then you make a request to the team to inspect the project, give you feedback, help you improve it more, and then you make it live on Enquirer. The way we try to support learning for citizens is through the provision of personalized and immediate feedback after they completed their investigation. And we hope that through this process, they will eventually start learning more about how science is done. So on Enquirer, we have two types of investigations, confidential missions. So missions is the word we use to name investigations, are closed investigations, all the data submitted is known only to the author of the investigation. So what we share with authors is let's say an Excel file with anonymized data set of that mission. And here I have an example, the Forest 404 experiment. In this mission, we share the set of audio clips with sounds from nature and we asked people about their reactions. The purpose was to understand the therapeutic value of sounds from nature. The other type of missions we have is social missions. These are open investigations, which means that all the data we share there is available to anyone to read, comment, or like it. And here I have the example of an investigation we created to understand how teaching in Africa has changed because of the pandemic. Enquirer has learned citizens as learners in the center of the activity to support their learning. But on the other hand, we try to contribute innovative and original insights to science. And here I have the example of the garden watch mission. This mission was in collaboration with the BBC and the British Trust of Ornithology. We managed to have more than 230,000 contributions. And the findings from this investigation pointed to what people should do in their gardens in order to support biodiversity and make it easier for species to live and grow in their gardens. So the overall vision about Enquirer is to empower citizens, participants, to act as scientists. So to start thinking and acting as scientists by first taking part in investigations set by others. And secondly, by enabling them to set up their own investigations that may be of personal interest or may be of relevance to their community. We want to educate citizens to start thinking critically and scientifically. And this is because we think that these keys are very crucial in the society we live in, given the importance of information around us and a lot of discussions around misinformation or disinformation. Okay, so to brief you about the background of this research, the research has been offered to 21 countries in Africa in response to the COVID-19 and the need to shift to remote teaching in these countries. More than 500 academics and non-academic staff members in these countries have been invited to take part in an eight-week program. Within these eight weeks, all the delegates, they were offered different types of events. Some of them, they were synchronous real-time based on seminars, workshops, lectures, and other, they were non-real-time, where they were offered to take part in some of the social events through different platforms. So some of the platforms were like a Telegram, which is a social network on their mobiles. Other, they are offered by some of the platforms to be engaged in on the OU website and on the Enquirer, which is a core of this work. Within the Enquirer, as Thea explained, actually, it gave us a great overview of the Enquirer. They were giving the opportunity to share their experience and become a scientist on the mission they've been given and to be able to critically reflect on the work during this period. The Enquirer in this project has two main tasks. The first one, it's a contribution. In the contribution, the delegates, they were given pre-constructed questions about how to remote online teaching. They were pre-constructing according to the objectives of the mission, and they were giving the opportunity to answer these questions. Some of these questions were based on a drop-down menu, so they can select from the options. They didn't have the opportunity to write more. Others, they have like a textbox, where they were given the opportunity to write down and reflect on their answers. And the other part, which is discussion, where they have been given an open space to discuss and reflect on their experience. I'm going to take you through both parts and to see how the learner side they were reflecting engaged, and also we'll have a highlight on the role of the educational expert who is working like a moderator to this platform. First of all, this is the main task of the Enquirer and how we did a thematic analysis for both parts from the learner and the education experts. And we were, as we mentioned, the closed-ended questions more a quantitative data and the open-ended questions more a qualitative data, which is a good feature of the Enquirer because all the answers, they are in a spreadsheet. We're able to extract and we're working on the analysis. First of all, we were the five questions they've been given, as we can see. The second question and the fifth question, both of them, they were given a drop-down menu to select from. But the rest of the question, they were open-ended and they have a text box when they can have their discussion. And then they go to the or have their reflection. Then they go for the discussion, which is no, there are no questions that are pre-constructed. They just, it's very open to them to reflect and get engaged and add their insights. So first of all, I'm going to take you through the main emerging themes as an answer for each contribution. And then we can go to the discussion section. The first question, we were asking them about to share an activity because the main mission, they were about remote teaching in Africa. What happened? What are the challenges? How they are, they are their perception and what kind of support they may be the need. So the first one, it share us an activity or experience that you encountered in your work during sense of the pandemic. And here you can see they are shared. These are the main like sub themes where they are sharing different kinds of experience and activity they had, either from them as a tutor or from the education or from the learners, from about the platform they are using. So it's kind of their sharing experience. And here this is an open-ended question. So they can even reflect to each other. The second question is one of the drop-down menu. So it's a closed-ended question where they are able to select from. And here you can see that they were like reflecting on what kind, how the tool that they used to get in contact with their students. It is really interesting because you can see that they vary between some of these platforms. There were real-time, others non-real-time, and some of them are just one-way communication. So like an email. And also one of the interesting aspects of here that we found some academics. They were using more than one platform to fit into the students' needs. So some of them they gave us actually WhatsApp, Telegram and SMS. So it depends on the students' needs. The third question here that they were asked about professional developing opportunities. Again, this is one of the interesting aspects because it is the difference between what has been offered by the organizations. It can be offered by their own institution or maybe another organization like the ACDE, which is the main organization that is setting up the whole program for them, which is responsible for distance education in Africa. But it's not just this. Many of them also, they were talking about their own PDP or professional developing plan and how they are actually going through between what is offered and what they can plan to themselves. The fourth question is about here. It's about, it is really one of the core questions here. What do you think about moving from face-to-face to remote teaching? Do you think it's a permanent or it's going to be a temporary shifting area? And here it's interesting that most of them, they say yes, it's a permanent but. So there are some sub themes about the but. What exactly? So it's not just, yes, we'd like to go there. But we found that people really, they are looking at what is what will happen after is going to be permanent, what they need, what like the sharing what actually what is the main their experience with them. This from the beginning since March 2020. The last question in the contribution is about, again, it is one of the drop menu questions and they were selecting from the main challenges. Really, what is like concerning them, what really they're not maybe they have like some of the issues about. So they were selecting and you can see that's exams and assessments, especially going shifting online. This is one of the main challenges. And this is really that is one of the things that give us kind of ongoing support, because we're working now on one of them sub projects as a response to this on how to support the academics in Africa with regard to the exams and how what are the main issues in providing an online exam and the different types of the assessments. These are the main five questions apart for the contributions. Let's go to the second part of the inquire mission where they have the discussion. Again, the discussion, it is really open area where they can discuss. And just and it is interesting because it is we found that the discussion, it is informed by the contribution. So when the people do like to discuss and reflect, they go to the discussion section. Again, we extracted the information from the from the inquire platform, and we work on the thematic analysis, and we came across some of the things. So here that you can see that people they are talking about the advantages and the challenges that they have. Interestingly, that you can see that sometimes a challenge for a person can be an opportunity for another. So some of the academics, they found that's really it is opportunity for to have a teacher student communication, because they're able to have a 24 seven support. Also, they have the opportunity students, they more can have like a personalized learning within the teacher with the teacher. Other academics, they found no, because it will break the physical presence of the whole environment as a teacher they content. And they found that's more kind of an isolation between the teacher student. So it is not one size fits all other themes that we came across about the discussed topics about the prerequisite for the online learning. So and this actually found this a link between what are the challenges and going to a permanent so permanent position. So going a permanent online teaching this there are prerequisite and this maybe this is a message between them and message to the to the their institutions and the organizations what they really they need either from themselves either from the organization from the institution and maybe from the library all kinds of support they need to prepare them to have a stable shifting to remote teaching. The interesting also thing about the solutions the solutions have been proposed some people they really took the challenge and take it forward and keep on working reflecting on different types of challenges. But also some people they are providing solutions to each other and here is where also the expert or the educational expert who is moderating the platform start also to share and to help with the solution from their own experience. The outcome of the learners what did learners learn here from the inquiry we found that they really they practice different areas of and different approaches within learning they share they communicate they reflect it so you can see this like a combination between inquiry based learning we start by the information question resources and findings and at the same time it's collaborative so it's not a standalone or a person like Google something but it is more a collective answer they could end it up with. There are things that we couldn't find within the inquiry like did it help them to make a decision making so is it something that we came across or something that tangible we can say yeah they decided something we there are things that we couldn't find or the impact because it may be impact that we'd like to go through more an ethnographic ethnographic pattern to find out what is the impact of this so but it is there are obvious pedagogical approach like collaborative and inquiry based learning have emerged. About the role of the Tuta and the educational expert who was more like a moderator, facilitator, educational expert and maybe sometimes like a mentoring there are also merging themes what we were doing because we're working again as thematic analysis but it's based on the self-reflection so the education expert they give their self-reflection on the role within the eight weeks mission so the theme that they were providing like the share their own experience the resources and sometimes it's the experience from their own work or from the open university resources or maybe a resort they came across they share it sometimes also they are initiating working like an icebreaker because not all people are really aware of what is this or maybe that they know exactly what they should do or maybe just because of the social aspect is missing so the really that the educational experts try to engage people socially to lead to ask questions and answers so the the main I would say as a summary the role of the education expert really vary between like going give you the guidance so about how the social guidance actually about how to start or maybe that helps also to answer or initiate or maintain the discussion sometimes just to make it like a chain and to link between people's answers also about the expert or the area of expertise going back to resources and try to provide some of the resources to help people to find an answer for the question also about to make an organizational function and to link between different learners and maybe different sometimes we like you say because they were people from different countries so we can say yeah your colleague from Kenya mentioned something like that can help the other in Nigeria and so on so these are like kind of different heads the educational experts can help with within the the mission on the inquire and this is actually the end what's next maybe down down to you Theo what you think what's next with the inquire the thing thank you Nessia that was really interesting and well I guess this was the first time we piloted this approach having an educational expert to support learning for participants or citizens who take part in citizen science investigations so we aim in the future to do more of these investigations to get a better understanding of how an educational expert could bet best support the discussions in an open or social mission and secondly I guess there are technical issues there we could improve I mean we could for example find ways to flag up interesting or really innovative ideas or comments so everyone can read them the moment they check in check into the investigation or we are looking now of ways to visualize the data in both confidential and social missions so people can see how their data compares to other people's the moment they submit their responses to the investigation so there are definitely a lot of things to do in the future both research wise and technically from my end I would say as an educational expert on the platform for the future I would like to know more about my learners so I think it's worth that when we are working on a different context we need to know more about the background and the experience of delegates and people who are going to take part in the platform know about their background experience and maybe some of the challenges I think that's as a preparation for an educational expert to moderate the inquire platform that may be something that I prerequisite for them and yeah I think that is the end and I would like to thank you pretty much thank you super interesting for you to be doing this action research in the moment to find out what's happening as we've all lived through a very strange year and online learning has taken on a new sense of importance for a variety of reasons so thank you very much both for your research and for presenting it here thank you very much thank you