This paper reports the progress that has been made towards the development of a mobile application to enable people to learn more about natural history by helping them to identify observations of nature as part of the iSpot project (www.ispot.org.uk). The paper identifies relevant research in mobile learning within the field of science and the challenges faced when designing and developing a mo...

BACKGROUND Since 2012, the International Workshop on Participatory Surveillance (IWOPS) has served as an informal network to share best practices, consult on analytic methods, and catalyze innovation to advance the burgeoning method of direct engagement of populations in voluntary monitoring of disease. OBJECTIVE This landscape provides an overview of participatory disease surveillance system...

Research strategies which emphasize participation are increasingly used in health research. Breaking the linear mould of conventional research, participatory research focuses on a process of sequential reflection and action, carried out with and by local people rather than on them. Local knowledge and perspectives are not only acknowledged but form the basis for research and planning. Many of t...

This paper investigates one the more controversial player practices in MMORPG’s, twinking, not in terms of value judgment but as a play from negotiating, working against and even transforming a MMORPG’s intended structure and design. Making use of participatory ethnographic observations of one of World of Warcraft’s particular forms of twinking, this devious behavior is discussed as being luxur...

Emerging forms of empowered participatory governance have generated considerable scholarly excitement, but critics continue to ask if such initiatives are “for real”: Are participatory governance processes sufficiently independent? Do citizen participants make good policy choices? An in-depth look at the case of the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform suggests that real citi...

The paper presents a novel approach to collecting, editing and performing visual and sound clips in real time. The cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story, and accessible as a way to create a final movie. It is shown how a graphical interface created for video production informs the design of a tangible environment that provides a spontaneous an...

Participatory budgeting has become a popular application of e-participation in Germany. About one hundred local governments have executed participatory budgets in the last year. Citizen participation in public budget planning is not formally requested by law in Germany. Also, the legal procedures to settle the budget of a local governments are not defined in detail. In consequence, different pr...

Issues associated with involvement of social program participants in program evaluation are analyzed. Although there seems to be a broad consensus of the need for participatory evaluation, the proposed rationales and concomitant benefits to evaluation practice appear to be quite diverse. Key issues include the rationale for "stakeholder" participation, definition of the "stakeholder," definitio...

This paper describes a service oriented architecture for mobile and web applications and the enablement of participatory observations of the environment. The architecture hosts generic microbial risk forecast models in bathing zones, which are trained by heterogeneous input data. Open observation data sources, specializing in water quality indicators and environmental processes are used for the...

Hispanic/Latinos (H/L) are being studied for healthcare disparities research utilizing community based participatory research (CBPR). CBPR’s active participation of community members and researchers suggests improvement in community health. Yet there are no known studies that inductively investigated the lived experience of H/L community leaders and members with CBPR using interpretive phenomen...