Teaching citizen science skills online: Implications for invasive species training programs

Citizen science programs are emerging as an efficient way to increase data collection and help monitor invasive species. Effective invasive species monitoring requires rigid data quality assurances if expensive control efforts are to be guided by volunteer data. To achieve data quality, effective online training is needed to improve field skills and reach large numbers of remote sentinel volunteers critical to early detection and rapid response. The authors evaluated the effectiveness of online static and multimedia tutorials to teach citizen science volunteers (n = 54) how to identify invasive plants; establish monitoring plots; measure percent cover; and use Global Positioning System (GPS) units. Participants trained using static and multimedia tutorials provided less (p