The potential of citizen science as a follow up program of student project assignment for biodiversity studies to be meaningful

Abstract

Nowadays, the implementation of project assignments of the study of biodiversity material in college is generally still local action, it is badly needed follow-up as a global perspective. Citizen science is one of the activities that have the potential to be applied. This descriptive study aims to investigate the implementation of student project assignments related to biodiversity studies and to propose the potential of citizen science as a global perspective and follow-up to project assignments in studying biodiversity to enhance its meaningfulness. Several students of the Biology Department in one university in East Java-Indonesia were involved as respondents (n = 74) and several scientific articles were used as sources of potential information of citizen science (n = 15). A questionnaire collected through Google form. The potential of citizen science data was obtained and combined with a literature review using descriptive qualitative data analysis. The conclusion of this study indicates that student project assignments in biodiversity studies were with field practice assignments or conducting research and reports performed in scientific articles. Citizen science has the potential as a follow-up to project assignments in studying biodiversity to be a global perspective and more meaningful.