Bioblitz feedback
Hello ZOO101,
Many of you have made valuable contributions to the Makhanda Bioblitz: THANK YOU! Some of the observations have reached Research Quality and made a contribution to biodiversity science in South Africa.
Unfortunately, not everyone has got the hang of what we are doing, and most those contributors have been sent guidance by experts from across the world. Please check your contributions and identifications for feedback, and act on the advice. If you get stuck, consult your demonstrator.
Best wishes,
Martin Villet
Comments
Some feedback:
Overly reliance on the AI suggestions in the ID box - For insects we dont have enough observations on iNaturalist locally yet to train the Artificial Intelligence on our insects, so it tries to match it to the North American insects it has been trained to.
So if you just accept the name proposed by iNaturalist and do not check that it occurs in South Africa, you should have mark deducted. Part of the identification process is to check if the goggo occurs in southern Africa (and indeed in the Eastern Cape), so if you forget to do this you should be docked marks.
Too many agreements to wrong IDs. If you agree with other students who make wrong IDs, you should also be docked marks. It means that you did not check (1) the features of the taxon that was identified, and (2) the locality of that organism. You obviously just blindly agreed, repeating the mistake. That should also be one mark deducted.
Two marks should be deducted if other users on iNaturalist added a revised ID, with reasons, that you did not correct your ID straight afterwards (you are notified of any disagreements and you should check!!). If you agreed to a disputed ID afterwards the same applies: you should be docked 2 marks. There is no excuse for students to perpetuate wrong IDs after a correction. It is sloppy and unacceptable - if you disagree then you must give good reasons.
Too small images. Come on!! You know how to take photos. Please use the camera zoom feature (drag two fingers outwards on the screen) to make the subject fill the screen. Subjects less than half screen size should only get half marks.
And try and get views not only of the entire insect, but also from below and the side and front. Remember you need to count antennae segments, the number of parts on the foot and clearly see the veins in the wings. Take as many pictures as needed to display these features. One picture is never enough!
Please also:
* join the project https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/the-makhanda-entomoblitz - This is a once off and takes 1 minute. The project will then display automatically on all your observations, allowing both branding and other contributors to comment more easily.
A handful of students have reported having trouble joining the project. It is possible that some of their phones have older technology that performs unpredictably. They were advised to try again using a computer when there is less traffic on the system.
117 people have joined the project, but possibly 17 of these are identifiers. That makes half the class have joined. Does this imply that 100 are having problems? This is slightly more than a handful, or quite a handful depending on the context.
Only a handful reported their problem; others don't speak up. The whole class has been told to contact their personal demonstarots individually. I'll be in class on Friday afternoon to see what can be resolved.
I know that some students can demonstrate on their own phones that they are project members, but they are not detectable to e.g. their own demonstrators. I will collect user names tomorrow.
Link here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&project_id=the-makhanda-entomoblitz&subview=grid&verifiable=any
click the grey filter box and Download (using defaults)
open in excel, insert a pivottable, rows (user_login), count anything, sum number of agreements sum number of disagreements.
Maybe that will help?
Thank you; did that. I get 14 'user_login's ... was expecting more :)
@martin_villet
I get 190 user_login s with Tony's method. You have to download the csv. The big "4" at the last step is not the answer, but it indicates that it is the fourth step.
EDIT: Sorry, you said '14' not '4'.
EDIT EDIT: I've been playing with the pivottable. Martin, it may make your task rather much easier.
Hello all I&APs,
We are reasonably keen to run the Makhanda Bioblitz again this year, partly because some interesting sightings were reported amongst the contentious identifications. The students loved the exercise and our recruitment to 2nd-year is up. The big question is, "How can we do better this time?"
The picture: ~220 18-year-old students received (1) a practical manual largely plagiarized from the iNaturalist web site, (2) two 45-minute tutorials that included screening of the iNaturalist videos about photography and identification (with URLs hotlinked in the PDF version of the manual and on the course's on-line site), and (3) recurrent real-time input from tutors (one per 12 students) during the two exercises (photography and identification). Some students didn't read the manual or the web sites, skipped the tutorial and relied on their (three other) group members to fill in their knowledge gaps. It seems less likely that language issues are at play too, although most of the class has English (let alone American English) only as a second or third language.
We more-or-less resolved the submission of duplicate images, got some way with getting reasonable photographs, and irritated many people with a flood of recalcitrant misidentifications from a handful of the ~220 students.
I would very much appreciate guidance on the last issue - misidentifications - which is why i'm asking about six months early.
Martin
As the AI gets better, the really bad IDs will get less.
So long as we can ensure that dozens of students dont make the same wrong ID, then most people understand that students need a little extra effort, and many are just doing it for the credits. Dont worry about those. So long as we dont end up with observations like this, it is not a real problem:: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/34353827 - but these really take the cake!!
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