Citizen Science as a Tool for Experiential Learning in Bee Conservation
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Abstract: Monitoring the health, abundance, and phenology of bees requires extensive resources and personnel. Citizen science can relieve this burden by summoning the public to contribute to data collection. Citizen science also affords opportunities for experiential learning, contextualizing participants’ experiences in the real world. At Bee Campus USA certified colleges, citizen science projects can engage community members in bee-focused research benefiting key conservation efforts and educational outreach. Such projects transcend academic disciplines, uniting the community in a common cause. A genuine appreciation for bees in their role as pollinators is a key motivating factor in participating in citizen science projects and aiding in bee conservation.
Keywords: citizen science, experiential learning, bees, college, community
Introduction
Nearly 25% of native bee species are at risk of extinction (Kopec & Burd, 2017). The global decline of native bees is primarily induced by humans (Drossart & Gérard, 2020). Declines in bumblebee abundance, diversity, and range, for example, have been attributed to pesticide use, habitat loss, and climate change (Richardson et al., 2019; Whitehorn et al., 2020), with Anderson et al. (2020) asserting that habitat loss is the main driver in pollinator declines. Beckham et al. (2017) found that two of the most common species of Texas bumble bees (Bombus fraternus and Bombus pensylvanicus) have experienced declines. Bumble bees are not the only native bees threatened by anthropogenic causes. Even newer species, such as the eastern Canary Islands small carder bee (Pseudoanthidium jacobii), are already threatened with extinction (Vereecken et al., 2023). Drossart and Gérard (2020) call for appropriate conservation measures that promote bee diversity and enhance environmental quality.
The bee’s crucial role in the environment, benefiting humans and non-humans alike, cannot be understated. Unfortunately, sustainable conservation measures for both pollinators and the plants that service them are lacking (Senapathi et al., 2015). Citizen science (CS), which is the collection of scientific data by volunteers who are often non-scientists or non-specialists (Domroese & Johnson, 2017), may be able to help increase the available body of data on bees. The real-world investigations that take place in CS projects call on public participation with a shared purpose of studying bees (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine et al., 2018). While many recognize the European honeybee’s (Apis mellifera) role as a pollinator, the contribution of wild bees, such as sweat (Lasioglossum), mason (Osmia), carpenter (Ceratina), and bumble (Bombus), is also gaining attention in the wake of declines (Appenfeller et al., 2020; Ganzevoort & van den Born, 2021).
CS is a plausible option for monitoring bees at the morphospecies level, or at a taxonomic level with unequivocal features that distinguish it from other species, as a potentially valuable conservation tool (Mason & Arathi, 2019), developing more robust environmental education and communication measures between the public and research (Requier et al., 2020). As a rapidly growing and emerging field (Le Féon et al., 2020; Scheuch et al., 2018) and one that provides a potentially less expensive way to monitor biodiversity than traditional methods (Appenfeller et al., 2020; Hill et al., 2016; Koffler et al., 2021), CS has potential for expanding bee conservation research and for encouraging everyday experiences with science and socio-ecological systems (Domroese & Johnson, 2017). Furthermore, involvement in CS projects that engage the community in bee conservation is beneficial both to lay participants and professional scientists (Koffler et al., 2021), underscoring its value as a tool for learning.
One setting for integrating this tool is the college campus. Historically, bee-focused CS studies have rarely included college students, with the majority of CS projects occurring through state or nationwide initiatives, or among beekeepers or other specialists. MacPhail et al. (2020), in their Bumble Bee Watch program spanning Canada and the United States, found that only 1.75% of respondents were between the ages of twelve and twenty-four, an age group that would include 79% of two-year college students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). In addition, Davis et al. (2019), discovered that highly active citizen scientists are more likely to live in the suburbs and have higher socioeconomic statuses than those with lesser participation. Facilitating a CS project on a college campus has the potential to close participation gaps among these key demographics, expanding the diversity of participants with unique perspectives. Glendale Community College (GCC) in Glendale, Arizona, for instance, is a Hispanic-serving institution. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (2024), 21% of Hispanic households experienced food insecurity in 2022. Raising awareness for bees, whose pollination services are essential to healthy food access, could encourage conservation actions that benefit more communities and lead to future studies.
CS invites public participation in research, presenting an ideal opportunity for participants to learn in real-world contexts. Experiential learning opportunities are needed to cultivate critical thinking and problem-solving (Cheng & Shelnutt, 2020-2021). CS projects fulfill that need by allowing non-experts to engage in data collection. Without a specialized background in bees, plants, or taxonomy, with training from subject matter experts and clear instructions, citizen scientists can help to solve the problem of bee endangerment. Goals of this study include helping participants understand and value biodiversity as a life-sustaining system in which they are a part (Scheuch et al., 2018) and raising awareness for the importance and diversity of bees (Flaminio et al., 2021). Interacting with nature will highlight the interconnectedness of humans and bees, demonstrating that CS is an ideal pedagogical tool for this purpose.
David A. Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning theory (ELT) asserts that we learn best through experience, following a cycle of concrete experiences, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. ELT provides a framework for citizen scientists’ meaning-making in their experiences and reflections. Interpretation and dissemination of data from CS projects stimulates application, perpetuating the cycle of learning and furthering the conservation mission. In this way, ELT is not a series of techniques, but rather, a program for reinvention of our personal lives and social systems (Kolb, 2014). Citizen scientists will have the opportunity to experience learning beyond a classroom or computer, engaging in hands-on experiences that redefine how we best acquire and disseminate knowledge. After participating in a bee-focused CS project, citizen scientists have the potential to achieve a greater understanding of bees, a motivating factor in participation (Ganzevoort & van den Born, 2021), and can take key conservation measures. Conservation efforts are often focused on problems that need fixing to address pollinator decline, but there is potential to instead emphasize the positive gains associated with understanding and monitoring pollinators, in addition to building appropriate habitats (Griffin et al., 2021).
CS challenges participants to consider how this reinvention extends to non-human realms. Through bee-focused CS projects, participants can partake in an active, self-directed learning process that they can apply to their everyday lives (Kolb, 2014), of which bees are an integral part. Because action outcomes and transformative learning are key goals, CS holds significant implications for experiential learning (Bueddefeld et al., 2022). Citizen scientists are presented with a bigger picture: Participating in CS projects allows them to contribute to world knowledge, resulting in more engaged learning (Christ et al., 2022). This qualitative study investigates what motivates CS volunteers to participate in a bee-focused CS project. By exploring motivations for participation, this study contributes to unlocking the power of CS as a pedagogical tool for experiential learning and bee conservation.
In this study, I was interested in determining how CS projects allow community members to contribute to research and science, increasing their awareness of biodiversity and conservation. I employed two methodologies, CS and qualitative research, including two methods, a survey and interviews, respectively. Quantitative data from the surveys informed the level of interest in participating in this CS project, while qualitative data from the interviews spoke to citizen scientists’ learning experiences and motivations. This study yielded rich data that iterates the merits of CS in the classroom and beyond.
Methods
Study Description
GCC has a 147-acre campus located on the ancestral homeland of the O’odham Jeweḍ, Akimel O’odham (Upper Pima), and Hohokam Nations. It is one of only three certified Bee Campuses in the state through Bee Campus USA. Certified campuses advocate for pollinators, create and enhance pollinator habitats, and offer educational opportunities that incorporate pollinator conservation, ongoing research, and education on bees. GCC has maintained its Bee Campus status since 2022. Because it contains community garden spaces with high levels of local flower and crop diversity, which may promote higher pollinator activity (Rajbhandari et al., 2023), GCC proved an ideal site for this study. I designated ten observation sites around GCC’s campus (Table 1), each containing different plants that are attractive to bees (Rajbhandari et al., 2023). Most of the sites were located in the southern half of the campus, but widely dispersed for the citizen scientists’ convenience.
Table 1. Observation Sites at GCC
This study ran from the third week of May 2024 through the first week of September 2024, a period selected for its prime bee activity. Participants included faculty, staff, and students at GCC. GCC is situated in a lower-income part of Glendale, Arizona, a city that, according to the United States Census Bureau (2022), has a higher poverty rate than the state as a whole, where fewer individuals own homes, and only 21.2% of the population is enrolled in college. Due to its economic climate, conducting this study at GCC presented an opportunity to diversify CS participants. In addition, there was no limit to the number of times volunteers could participate in the project. Following the CS survey, they had the option to sit for a follow-up interview where I was able to learn about their experience participating in the project. For this analysis, I will focus primarily on the interview data.
Research Design and Sampling
This research employed two methodologies that embody ELT principles: CS (Heigl et al., 2020) and qualitative research (Merriam & Tisdell, 2019). Both methods in this study–surveys and interviews–engaged participants in a stage of ELT; the survey required concrete experiences, and the interviews called for reflective observation (Ajani, 2023). Employing a short, digital survey for participation in the project made it accessible to a large number of potential respondents representing an even larger population (O’Leary, 2017). It included an asynchronous training document outlining broad categories of bees for easier species identification (Ashcroft et al., 2021; Dart et al., 2022; Flaminio et al., 2021). The document was two pages in length, including brief descriptions and images of common Arizona bees.
Then, participants were provided a labeled map of study sites, each including signage with a site number and a QR code to the survey. The signs also included the title “Bee a citizen scientist!”; directions to scan the QR code to record observations; important safety reminders to drink water and refrain from touching the bees; and a campus phone number for those seeking medical attention. This CS portion of the study included interactive experiences for learners, requiring them to count the number of bees they observed at the chosen study site and record their data on a Google form. They also had the option to upload a photo of the bees at their observation site.
The success of this project relied on aligning its objectives with participants’ personal interests (Phillips et al., 2016), so selecting a Bee Campus, in which community members collaborated to achieve Bee Campus USA certification, was a promising place to start. Participants in this study were members of a community pursuing higher education, whether they were taking, teaching, or facilitating classes. Participants were sampled with two techniques: criterion and network. In order to meet the sample criteria (Merriam & Tisdell, 2019), a participant only needed to be a member of the GCC community. Conducting this study in such a large, well-connected group also afforded network–or snowball–sampling (Merriam & Tisdell, 2019). Once I was able to identify individuals who met the criteria, I could then ask them to refer the study to additional participants (Merriam & Tisdell, 2019).
The Interviews
Valentine et al. (2018) found that incorporating a qualitative component, such as interviews, is one way to improve understanding of CS’s diverse learning outcomes and the meaning of change. In employing interviewing as a method, I sought to learn about why volunteers participate in CS, informed by their experiences in a real project, ultimately speaking to how such projects lead to future action. As qualitative research takes time, the immediate goal, both for myself and for participants, was “the extension of knowledge” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2019, p. 3), with more in-depth findings available at the conclusion of the study. I understood I needed to create momentum and maintain a manageable tempo, as breakthroughs in my findings might not have occurred until later interviews (Gerson & Damaske, 2021).
One of the primary goals of the interviews was to gain an understanding of the CS experience that extends what I would have been able to observe with the surveys alone. The qualitative interviews built on the survey’s preliminary investigation. As such, instead of including Likert-type items just in the survey, for example, ultimately limiting the questions and opportunities to seek clarification and depth (O’Leary, 2017), they served as the base of the interviews. Probes, which Gerson and Damaske (2021) describe as “the heart of the interview process and essential to its success” (p. 114), yielded additional insights and prompted reflection on the interview responses as they came in. Conducting interviews that allowed study participants to describe and explain their understanding was foundational to the qualitative approach of this study (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2019).
The thirty-minute interviews I conducted prompted conceptualization of the citizen scientists’ experiences. I included five Likert-type items (Table 2), in which participants rated their level of agreement on a scale from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). These statements were followed by voluntary participant commentary and interviewer probes as needed to facilitate conversation. This portion of the study was emergent, as I did not know all of the questions I would be asking ahead of time (Merriam & Tisdell, 2019). Furthermore, these one-on-one, semi-structured interviews afforded more detailed and intimate knowledge than the CS survey alone could offer (Gerson & Damaske, 2021).
Table 2. Interview Likert-type Items
Data Analysis
Some predictability in responses was expected. When the interviews concluded, I hoped to explain why the results were generalizable to a larger population of college campus community members, and participants in bee-focused CS projects more broadly. In order for CS to make a meaningful impact in biodiversity conservation, the research findings should be transferable and useful in similar contexts (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2019). This approach supported an inductive analysis of data by themes and patterns, and having a collection of data from multiple participants proved more informative than any data I could have gathered from just one interviewee (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2019). A regular interrogation of research goals and reflexivity ensured quality practice. It was critical that interviews were conducted with consistency to capture a true essence, and that the findings had broad applicability (O’Leary, 2017).
Ongoing analysis and reflection were critical to this research process. As volunteers participated in the study, data was available to analyze. It was crucial I examined this data as it was received, ensuring collection and analysis occurred simultaneously throughout the study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2019). The CS survey data set the stage for the qualitative data, allowing me to identify which volunteers were willing to participate in follow-up interviews. It was important the data from the surveys was sorted prior to engaging in the analysis of the interviews (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2019). This allowed me to begin identifying patterns and themes through coding. As I progressed through the a priori coding process, I developed more nuanced ideas.
The ELT framework assisted me in coding interview data (Figure 1). The categories within the framework–concrete experiences (CE), reflective observation (RO), abstract conceptualization (AC), and active experimentation (AE)–served as the same qualitative codes I used to sort data (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2019). I also included affective codes to further assist me in identifying themes and patterns. These four ELT categories reflected participants’ social complexities, emphasizing the value of exploring and understanding their interactions, processes, lived experiences, and belief systems (O’Leary, 2017). The final phase in ELT, active experimentation, allowed participants to imagine future actions. Using these codes, my interview data revealed the possibilities of a better world for bees and humans alike.
Figure 1. Interview Coding Example
Each of the codes on the left side of the figure corresponds to one of four stages in Kolb’s ELT. “I’ve always been interested in stuff like this,” for example, demonstrates reflective observation; the participant considered her interests over a period of time, likening them to her experience in the present study. In the final coded item, “getting people interested in their environment and their surroundings,” for example, the interviewee alluded to active experimentation; she described future action she would like to see, which she could be prompted to elaborate on with additional probes. The affective codes on the right side of the figure, which, in this instance, were all positive, illustrate the participant’s affection for the topic, a theme consistent throughout the interviews.
Results
Nine volunteers participated in the CS survey, with five individuals submitting survey data more than once throughout the study period, for a total of eighteen observations. Seven participants sat for a follow-up interview, with the largest group being faculty. Two interviewees identified themselves as male and five as female. All participants identified as white. Interviewees ranged in age from thirty to sixty-three, with the majority of participants in their forties. All seven interviewees responded to the five Likert statements. Each interviewee offered additional commentary clarifying their level of agreement with each statement (Table 3).
Table 3. Interviewee Responses to Likert-Type Items
The first Likert item sparked the most conversation. The majority of participants responded with a five (“strongly agree”) regarding their interest in observing bees. Curiosity about bees’ day-to-day activities drew one participant to the project. Another shared, “I have flowering plants in my backyard and I sit out there and watch bees all the time.” One remarked, “Bees are incredibly important…I love supporting the bees.” Participants also indicated that the observation was “fun,” “relaxing,” “peaceful,” and “meditative.” One participant expressed her “interest in the biological world” and shared praise for the methodology in saying, “I love the idea of citizen science.” Several commented that the project was easy.
Although the level of agreement was less consistent, participants also indicated above average agreement in being able to use scientific concepts and understand bees, Likert items two and three respectively. In particular, participants denoted actions like observing, counting, and using time as scientific concepts. One interviewee, who conducted two observations and did not see any bees in the first, concluded that the bees did not like the heat that day. Although it is not possible for me to prove that this was true in that particular instance, heat stress is known to disrupt bees’ foraging behaviors (Walters et al., 2022). Another interviewee, who strongly agreed with the third statement, shared that he was able to follow along with the bees’ process, presumably their visitation to flowers to collect pollen.
Participants offered little commentary on the fourth Likert item. More participants responded with a two or three regarding their ability to reflect on their learning in the project than they did for other statements, but some described specific reflections. One participant shared, “I am somebody who knows that nature does positively impact me.” Another, who happened to visit one of the sites when it did not have blooms, explained that she did not expect to see any bees present. She remarked, “I noticed myself naturally making predictions and comparing my predictions,” particularly when she was surprised to see bees active at the flowerless site. She also explained that she found herself reflecting on her experience conducting research for her own dissertation in contributing data for a colleague.
Finally, the majority of participants responded with a five regarding their ability to learn about bees and were eager to discuss how. After interacting with the bees, one participant realized she was “not afraid of them anymore.” Several interviewees remarked that they did not realize how many different types of bees there were. Others considered the invaluable role of bees, with one participant stating, “We need bees to basically help us with whatever our food source is.” Looking ahead, another shared that he invited himself to work with a beekeeper friend. My final interviewee shared the story of a bee she rescued, proud that her family is one that always saves insects that make their way into the house.
After examining the survey data, in a blind-copied email to all survey participants, I shared results from their observations and resources for participants to take their passion for bees to the next level and create their own pollinator habitats at home (Figure 2). Two citizen scientists replied to this communication, expressing pride and appreciation and reiterating how enjoyable they found the project.
Figure 2. Follow-Up Email to Study Participants
Discussion
Participant Motivations
Similarities in the motivations of study participants allowed me to generalize interview findings. Across the board, interviewees indicated a passion for bees and their plight as a primary reason to participate in my CS study (Domroese & Johnson, 2017). Generalization would imply that one participant’s experience with this CS project is likely an example of another participant’s and so on (Merriam & Tisdell, 2019). This suggests that similar bee-focused CS projects could scale, assuming additional participants also have positive feelings toward bees, and/or a sense of urgency in engaging in their conservation. These research findings are transferable and useful in similar contexts (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2019), maximizing the potential impact of CS as a meaningful tool for learning and action.
This positivity is not without its challenges, however. Despite an interest in conserving bees, citizen scientists may possess a lack of knowledge that reveals a gap between awareness and understanding (Christ et al., 2022). For some participants, it is possible this gap was too wide to bridge within the context of this study. In addition, many participants exhibited environmentally friendly behavior in advance (Christ et al., 2022), which ultimately led to their participation in the study. An appreciation and admiration for bees was a clear motivating factor, the depth of which may not have shifted significantly as a result of involvement in the study. The hope is that study participants share their knowledge and passion with others to further the mission of bee conservation.
Challenges in recruiting student participants may have been the result of how the CS project was marketed. My email blasts promoting the study, for instance, were addressed only to college employees; I was not permitted access to the college’s student distribution list. Only instructors could share the project with their classes, and several instructors I spoke with indicated that they would be offering the project as an extra credit opportunity. Presumably, students needed to provide their instructor with evidence of participation and may have determined that entering random data on the form, which they assumed the instructor would not verify for accuracy, may have sufficed. Without making the project a required assignment, it seems most students may not have prioritized participating. Christ et al. (2022), in their facilitation of a CS project in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade biology classes, remarked, “the degree of students’ willingness to learn was very high” (p. 12). They suggest paying special attention to “creating appropriate learning situations” (Christ et al., 2022, p. 12), which may necessitate a structured curriculum and classroom setting for most students.
Experiential Learning
This CS study demonstrates that experiential learning has a place on the college campus for faculty willing to facilitate projects within their curriculum. CS projects afford authentic experiences, which can be a motivating factor in participation, resulting in an opportunity to learn (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine et al., 2018). Participants were able to sympathize with the plight of bees, and this study afforded them the means to collect data contributing to important conservation efforts at GCC. Participation in this study yielded not only concrete experiences, the first stage in ELT, but also invited transformative learning experiences (Kolb, 2012 as cited in Ajani, 2023). As participants reflected on their experiences throughout the interviews, they indicated a desire to be a part of a cause bigger than themselves, demonstrating an awareness of bees as a key to their well-being and quality of life (Barbiéri et al., 2023).
In addition, at GCC, this CS project contributed to community literacy on bees and conservation through establishing networks and affording mechanisms for sharing information (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine et al., 2018). Several volunteers expressed participating in the study as a result of a GCC peer encouraging their participation or sharing their experience (Gratzer & Brodschneider, 2021), enabling greater circulation and co-production of knowledge (Maderson & Wynne-Jones, 2016). Emails, Canvas announcements, flyers, and an informational table pop-up also served to promote the study and educate the GCC community about our school’s Bee Campus USA certification and the importance of bee conservation. Dissemination of learning from CS projects like this one motivates others to act on behalf of wild bees (Christ et al., 2022).
Effective management of participant logistics greatly contributed to the success of this CS project. Firstly, members of the GCC community proved to be the appropriate target audience (Appenfeller et al., 2020). GCC’s status as a Bee Campus–indicated via news articles on the college website and signage throughout the campus–with a dedicated Bee Campus committee working to educate community members about pollinators, resulted in a group of passionate, engaged participants. This level of engagement was due in part to the plants being easily accessible to the citizen scientists (Mason & Arathi, 2019). In addition, these citizen scientists had the potential to learn specific skills associated with the project (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine et al., 2018), which in this case, included being able to identify and count bees, and record their observations in a Google form. The survey was short and straightforward, allowing for easy data submission (Appenfeller et al., 2020).
Even with engaged participants, however, the matter of whether or not a volunteer with limited training was actually observing a bee could be problematic. Species-level identification is crucial to detecting global changes on bees, but such identification is challenging and requires the assistance of expert bee taxonomists (Flaminio et al., 2021; Le Féon, 2016). GCC’s citizen scientists received only very brief, asynchronous training to assist them in identifying bees in broad categories. As a result, bee-focused CS projects like this one may be useful just for preliminary investigations (Dart et al., 2022). On a community college campus striving to maintain its Bee Campus USA certification with simple interventions, this may be sufficient. In addition, college students could share observations to a program like iNaturalist to assist with species identification.
I owe relatively straightforward analysis of interview data to ELT. Coding participant responses in alignment with ELT’s four stages not only helped to categorize the data, but also to contextualize it within real-life experience. This practice revealed participants’ openness to new experiences, and ability to reflect on those experiences, develop theories based on their observations, and employ new theories in decision-making and problem-solving (Kolb, 2014). Responses to the Likert items varied, but many spoke to ELT’s first two stages, concrete experiences and reflective observation. The final Likert-type item, “I am someone who can learn about bees,” alludes to the third stage in ELT, abstract conceptualization. Interviewees considered future learning opportunities. Although the interview questions were not designed specifically to initiate abstract conceptualization, through organic conversation, many participants reflected on their learning and determined how to apply their newfound knowledge (Ajani, 2023).
Sharing the findings of the study and pollinator habitat resources helped to facilitate the last stage, active experimentation, where participants could apply their learning to new experiences. The content afforded volunteers the opportunity to reflect on their participation in my CS project, allowing them to reach generalizations that will guide future experiences and learning (Gencel et al., 2021). Ultimately, educators who are interested in implementing CS projects across disciplines could employ the experiential learning model as a framework (Kolb, 2014). By taking students through the ELT cycle with a bee-focused CS project, it is possible to raise awareness for and change attitudes toward wild bees, as well as encourage pro-environmental behavior (Christ et al., 2022). ELT is maximized in such learning spaces that encourage developmental experiences (Gencel et al., 2021). As such, CS projects can help learners to develop a positive mindset and actionable conservation goals.
Limitations
The bulk of the study period took place during GCC’s summer semester in which there is significantly lower enrollment than in fall or spring. According to the GCC Data Center, at the main campus, where this study took place, Summer 2024 enrollment was 80% lower than in Fall 2024. In addition, faculty are not required to teach over the summer–and some opt to teach only online–reducing foot traffic at GCC even further. For those present on campus, heat may have been a barrier to participation, with the Phoenix-metro area enduring unrelenting 100-degree temperatures, breaking records with a high temperature of 118 on July 5 (Caspers, 2024). The heat may have deterred study participants, and possibly impacted the abundance of blooms and bees, too.
In addition, despite public interest in bees (Christ et al., 2022; Le Féon et al., 2016), only five students participated in the survey, and there were none that sat for follow-up interviews. There were also three students who submitted what appears to be fabricated data, which I did not include in the participation numbers stated in the Results section. One of the observations came in in the afternoon during busy campus hours, but the participant uploaded a stock image that did not match the study site indicated on their Google form. The other two participants who appeared to have submitted false data also provided stock images that did not align with their chosen study site. One of these observations came in when it would have been too dark to conduct an observation, at a hesperaloe plant (Hesperaloe parviflora) that no longer had blooms at that point in the study. For GCC students who may not fit the profile of a typical citizen scientist, participating in a CS project may not be as accessible, reiterating the potential for integrating such projects directly into the curriculum.
Conclusion
This CS project proved a valuable tool for monitoring and conserving native bees (Appenfeller et al., 2020), even with a small number of participants. Their personal norms, indicating responsibility for engaging in bee conservation, predict pro-environmental behavioral intentions (Barbiéri et al., 2023). Although their participation in this CS project does not guarantee volunteers will take action in their spare time (Scheuch et al., 2018), they have newfound experiences and resources that may allow them to apply their learning about bees and their habitats to their personal lives. They can purposefully design their own spaces, whether a plant in a pot or a robust pollinator garden, to help conserve endangered bee species (Christ et al., 2022). Engaging the public and making them aware of the plight of bees made this research possible (Persson et al., 2023). To expand the growing body of such research, college faculty members can employ CS as a pedagogical tool for experiential learning across domains.
CS projects facilitate experiential learning and contribute to biodiversity conservation. ELT is a useful framework for educational innovation, including learning-centered instructional design, curriculum development, and lifelong learning (Kolb, 2014). As the human desire to interact with nature remains steady (Mason & Arathi, 2019), there is a place for citizen scientists to engage in authentic learning experiences with biodiversity on their campuses and in their personal lives. The ultimate purpose of this project was bee conservation (Flaminio et al., 2021), in which volunteers are now better equipped to participate. Through active experimentation, citizen scientists can help to meet the objectives of Bee Campus USA certification, including advocating for pollinators, and creating and enhancing pollinator habitats that promote healthy, persistent, and diverse populations (Appenfeller et al., 2020; Rajbhandari et al., 2023). Citizen science is a promising tool for experiential learning in bee conservation.
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Jackie Witzke is a student in Prescott College’s Sustainability Education Ph.D. program. She received her B.A. in English from Michigan State University and her M.Ed. in Educational Administration and Supervision from Arizona State University. She has been teaching English for sixteen years and is a full-time faculty member at Glendale Community College in Glendale, Arizona. 
