Community Research Volunteer for UCL Citizen Science Academy at Goodsted

Who is Goodsted?

Goodsted's vision is to empower collaboration for social and environmental progress. We are a platform that connects individuals who want to share/volunteer their skills & expertise with non-profits and impact organisations. Through our digital platform, projects and organisations can post skilled based volunteer needs and find the right person to support their project. It is an open community platform with the aim to nurture collaboration to progress causes we all care about. With this post, we're looking to reach out to individuals interested in volunteering and grow our volunteer community.

Which organisation will you be supporting? 

The UCL Citizen Science Academy is based at the Institute for Global Prosperity and has been designed in partnership with the UCL Office for Open Science and the cross-faculty Citizen Science Working Group in order to make participation in research inclusive and accessible to people from all backgrounds.

The UCL Citizen Science Academy offers high-quality, practice-based education and training programmes to equip people with research knowledge and practical skills to get involved in social action and local decision-making.   

What do they want to achieve?

Understanding how the UCL Citizen Science Certificate is used by their alumni.

Insight into the wider market on citizen science /community engagement qualifications.

What do they need help with?

UCL Citizen Science Academy recently launched UCL Citizen Science Certificate, an innovative new certification for citizen scientists who complete training on one of the citizen science programmes. The Academy is interested to know how they should further shape this certificate to suit the needs of those on their programmes (many of who have never been to university), and identify new types of qualifications, such as micro credentials, they could offer. They would like to engage with an intern who would be interested in scanning the market for what is being offered elsewhere in this space, and possibly interviewing some of their current citizen scientists to get their views on how their certificate can best help them get further employment. It might be developing it into a nationally recognised award (such as an NVQ) or starting an official apprenticeship scheme - they're very open to ideas.

What do they have in place?

The UCL Citizen Science Certificate is already a very important step UCL has taken to value the work of citizens on research projects, and they have an active alumni body and professional network who are keen to work more with them. They would give good support to the intern who is more than welcome to join some of their citizen science teaching, and be integrated into our team.

Time Commitment

This role requires a time commitment of 24 hours. 

Click on the link here to volunteer: https://app.goodsted.com/opportunity/ivledrtmldszvg6l8hm495jpd

Please note: You will need to apply directly through the link provided above and not through the Apply button on this job description.