Macroinvertebrates.org

A Digital Tool for Supporting Identification Activities During Water Quality Biomonitoring Trainings

Presented by:

Alice Fang, Carnegie Mellon University

Marti Louw, Carnegie Mellon University

Camellia Sanford-Dolly, Rockman et al.

NSF Grant #1623969, Learning to See, Seeing to Learn : �A Sociotechnical System Supporting Taxonomic Identification Activities in Volunteer-Based Water Quality Biomonitoring

CitSci Virtual 2021

How do you teach people to identify aquatic insects?

Currently used print resources for macroinvertebrates ID include field guides, keys, and flash cards.

Field guides are traditionally dense, printed in formal textbooks with a lot of technical or scientific explanations, and tend to be for experts or more knowledgeable learners.

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Keys and flashcards often show only one view of an insect and may not go past Order level.

Macroinvertebrates.org is an online learning resource designed to support macroinvertebrate identification in water quality monitoring and environmental education activities. ��In this poster, we report on the perspectives of trainers, gathered through the design research and formative evaluation process.

Background

• People lack confidence in their observation and ID skills�
• ID tools and learning resources are often print/paper-based and hard to access
• Resources often lack the visual quality, detail and views needed for ID tasks
• Trainings are sporadically available, and participants lack opportunities to practice and check IDs before and after trainings

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Our three-year iterative co-design process with trainers and voluteers focused on key challenges volunteers face in learning to identify aquatic macroinvertebrates accurately:

To address these design challenges, the team created Macroinvertebrates.org.

So… what is Macroinvertebrates.org?

Some of the features of the platform:

• Collection of image sets for 150 common freshwater macroinvertebrates common in eastern USA
• Organized by Order, Family
• Zoomable, high resolution images
• Clickable close-up views of diagnostic characters
• Interactive Key
• Training and educational resources

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*Macroinvertebrates are animals without a backbone that are large enough to recognize without magnification

If you would like to learn more about Macroinvertebrates.org, �you can watch this quick Youtube video that demonstrates the different features.

Study Design—Part 1

Research Question:�What challenges do trainers face in teaching and facilitating freshwater macroinvertebrate ID with volunteers?

Participants: �Trainers from water quality biomonitoring organizations

Methods:

• National Online Survey (n=117)
• Trainer interviews (n=11)

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Aquatic Biomonitoring Training Workshop

Key Findings from National Trainer Survey

Findings from a national survey with 177 organizations involved in freshwater quality monitoring and training indicated:

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Louw, M., Muenz, T., Roberts, J., Wilson, M., and Kerlin, S. (2018). Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Identification Trainings for Volunteers: Results of a National Materials and Practices Inventory Survey. Technical report to be published through the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science. Pittsburgh, PA USA. (CMU-HCII-18-104).

• Trainers’ most common objectives were to teach aquatic macroinvertebrate identification (93%, n= 101) and teach sampling procedures and protocols (87%).
• Trainers tended to train only to Order (19%), 44% train to Order with some Families, and 20% train to Family (n=101),
• Some trainers were interested in training volunteers to identify to a deeper taxonomic level than they currently do, with 31% (n=65) wanting to train to Family, and 21% indicating they would like to train to Genus.
• The two most common difficulties experienced when implementing volunteer macroinvertebrate biomonitoring are ensuring volunteer data are valid and reliable (56%, n=75) and bolstering volunteers’ confidence in identifying aquatic macroinvertebrates (52%).

Print resources are most commonly used during trainings, whereas websites and mobile applications are least often used (n=101).

Examples of challenges identified -by trainers during interviews-

Lack of volunteer confidence

Highlighting relevant features

I found that it was really difficult to take a volunteer with no baseline or foundational knowledge and get them to a point where they felt comfortable doing identifications over the course of a one-day training ... And so I was interested in finding a resource that would help with that.”� —Trainer

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Prior to using the website we were using a dichotomous key… [that] allowed us to get to order pretty good, but there are families within those orders that have varied pollutions ... �to collect good data… you need to go to family. And it was hard to really �call out some of the diagnostic characteristics that are harder to see or represent based on a drawing.”� —Trainer

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Study Design—Part 2

Research Question:�What features of Macroinvertebrates.org support trainers in teaching and facilitating macroinvertebrate ID trainings with volunteers?

Participants: �Trainers from water quality biomonitoring organizations

Evaluation Activities:

• In-person ID Training Session (3 sites)
• Pre-post surveys (n = 7 trainers)
• Observations of trainers using digital resources
• Retrospective phone interviews (n= 11 trainers)
• Online Training Webinars
• Post-surveys (n= 36 trainers)

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Training Workshop

Key Findings from Trainer Surveys

84% of trainers said the website made it easier for them to identify specimens needed for water quality monitoring (n=31)

60% said the website increased the quality of the data they feel they can report. (n=30)

Impact on citizen science data collection

Key Themes from Trainer Surveys & Interviews

Trainers said the website was most useful for:

• Looking closely at features of aquatic insects
• Highlighting relevant diagnostic characters at the Order and Family level
• Providing volunteers with opportunities to practice their ID skills within and outside of trainings

Using the Site: Looking Closely

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The fact that the gigapixel [images] have such great quality and such detail is just amazing. It catches everybody's eye now that you can see gills… and you can see all parts of it without having a really good microscope and trying to gather really good live or preserved samples. And you can simply look into website and zoom in and out and flip them over.”

—Trainer

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94% of trainers said the site was most useful for viewing images more closely (n=34)

You don't get that out of a dichotomous key, that incredible diversity even within an Order, like with mayflies or caddisflies. And clicking into the pointers that went to various characteristics provided an immediate satisfaction to me that, hey, I really know what this feature is and �I can identify it. I can name it without looking it up in the glossary.”

—Trainer

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Using the Site: Highlighting Order Characteristics

91% said the site was most useful to see ORDER level features of macroinvertebrates (n=35)

To be able to really zoom in and understand the feature and to differentiate features from one another and to be able to see an example of a specific Family, if you feel unsure about where you’re getting to in a key.”

—Trainer

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Using the Site: Highlighting Family Characteristics

86% said the site was most useful to see FAMILY level features of macroinvertebrates (n=35)

Using the Site: Opportunities to Practice

Now we can send them something that gives them an opportunity to do the reading before the class. They’re able to have a leg up on identification and come into the workshop with a baseline. Then the workshop is able to show them the bugs in real life. It's changed the entire way we teach people about macroinvertebrates for the better.”

—Trainer

The digital tool provides new opportunities for volunteers to become familiar with identifying macroinvertebrates before trainings, and continue to review post-workshop.

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Next Steps

To support ID streamside without Internet on mobile devices, we are currently developing a downloadable app version for Android and iOS.

Email us at: contact@macroinvertebrates.org if you would like participate in user testing or be invited to a launch event.

Contact us for more information!

Alice Fang, REU Design Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University: acfang@andrew.cmu.edu

Marti Louw, Principal Investigator, Carnegie Mellon University: mrlouw@andrew.cmu.edu

Camellia Sanford-Dolly, Evaluator, Rockman et al: camellia@rockman.com

Andrea Kautz, Carnegie Museum of Natural History: KautzA@carnegiemnh.org

Dr. John Morse, Clemson University: JMORSE@clemson.edu

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Project Email: contact@macroinvertebrates.org

This study is supported by the National Science Foundation (Award No. 1623969). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the evaluation team and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Clemson University

Stroud Water Research Center

Rockman et al

Trout Unlimited

MD Dept of Natural Resources

Allarm / Dickinson

Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy

And thanks to our co-investigators and co-design partners!