By Sarah Jones (Chicago Botanic Garden)
Information
Budburst is a plant-focused, nationwide citizen science program in which many classrooms participate. Students collect and submit data on local plants and pollinators to help researchers study the effects of climate change. The resulting data are free for anyone to download and use. Budburst enables students to analyze and interpret real-world biological datasets in a wide variety of educational settings, including high school and college biology, environmental science, and statistics classrooms. Like many research programs, Budburst relies on opportunistically collected data, resulting in large, “messy” (patchy and variable) datasets. Such datasets present a natural opportunity for students to practice many data literacy skills, including describing/interpreting variability, grappling with missing data and outliers, and thinking critically about study design and related concepts (e.g., sampling bias and statistical power). Furthermore, new data from across the country are routinely submitted, resulting in opportunities for students to analyze largely unexplored datasets and potentially discover something new. This session will showcase the Budburst app, which allows educators and students to easily submit, aggregate, and download their own data and access data from the nationwide database. It will also highlight Budburst’s use in student-led research projects and data visualizations.