ABSTRACT
Scientific inquiry is inherent in citizen science (CS), and perhaps for this reason has been used to distinguish between contributory, collaborative and co-created models of public participation in CS. This chapter provides empirical evidence to support the use of embedded assessments (EA) as a measure of scientific inquiry skill. It discusses three environmentally based CS projects as case studies, such as, Nature's Notebook (NN), Young Scientist Club's Driven to Discover (YSC-D2D), and Dragonfly Detectives (DD). NN is a national, online monitoring program where amateur and professional naturalists of all ages record observations of plants and animals to help generate long-term datasets. YSC-D2D includes a unit that challenges youths to design an inquiry project connected to science, and CS in particular. DD is operated out of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and was designed to collect data that can be used to document the relation between the white-tail dragonfly's flight behavior and weather.
