STEPS TOWARDS OPEN SCIENCE

AND EDUCATION IN LITHUANIA

Vida Mildažienė1, Egle Marija Ramanauskaitė2

1Vytautas Magnus university

2 Human Computation Institute

Introducing myself:Vida Mildažienė

• 1979 graduated Chemical Faculty (Chemist lecturer, biochemistry) Vilnius universitity

• 1979- 2008 Kaunas Medical University (Inst. for Biomedical Research, Inst. of Cardiology)

• 1997 – present Faculty Nature Sciences, Vytautas Magnus university

• 2008 – 2015 Director of Kaunas botanical garden, Vytautas Magnus university

• 1991 PhD in Physical sciences (biochemistry, 04P)

• 2001 Degree of habilitated doctor (Biomedicine 01B, Biochemistry).

• 2005 Professor title

Science communication:

• Organizer of Kaunas science festival „Pamatyk kitaip“ 2006-2012;

• National coordinator of „The Fascination of Plants Day“ 2012-2015;

• Supervisor of biology and biochemistry section of the National Student Academy 2006-present ;

• Organizer of „Children Science laboratory“ in Kaunas Botanical Garden, VMU (opened in 2011).

• Coordinator of VMU part in the project „Development and implementation

of tools for the national science communication system VP1-3.2-ŠMM-02-V-02-003

• Author of educative videofilms:

„Samangyviai (Bryozoa)“

„Lėtūnai (Tardigrada)“,

„Paukščių žiedavimas Ventės rage“

„Kamieninės ląstelės“ /Stem Cells/, etc.

Open science for education, for society?

Fecher, Benedikt; Friesike, Sascha

(2014). "Open Science: One Term, Five

Schools of Thought". Opening

Science. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_2:

Five Open Science schools of thought:

• The infrastructure school - concerned

with the technological architecture,

• the public school - concerned with the

accessibility of knowledge creation,

• the “measurement school” –

concerned with alternative impact

measurement,

• the “democratic school” – concerned

with access to knowledge;

• the “pragmatic school” – concerned

with collaborative research.

„We recognize two different streams within the public

school: The first is concerned with the accessibility of

the research process, the second with the

comprehensibility of the research result. Both

streams involve the relationship between scientists

and the public and define openness as a form of

devotion to a wider audience.“

Bringing science closer to society:

first steps in Science communication in LT

First tools:

(I) Science festivals;

(II) Open days in universities (science communication or marketing?)

National science festival „Erdvėlaivis Žemė“ or „Space craft Earth“ from 2004- present

- 30 000 participants in 2 weeks

Kaunas science festival „Pamatyk kitaip“ or „See it in a different way“ 2006-2012

- 5 000 participants 1 or 2 days

Image of Researchers of Lithuanian schoolchildren

• Children drawing contest „The portrait of researcher“

was organized by Kaunas science festival „Pamatyk

kitaip“ : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLnR8nNSkug

Unknown artist Augustė Dubauskaitė, 5 years

Tomas Skrodis, 7 years

The message: the real wish and creative efforts to get closer to science - deserve to be supported

I. The early stage (2000-2008):

small and episodically opened window to Science

• Science communication efforts - uncoordinated

and mostly based on the personal initiative;

• There were only few type of small grants (1

programme) from the Ministery R&E to support

these activities;

• Several NGO concentrated enthusiasts: „Mokslo

krosnis“; student organizations, like „Modusas“;

few scientists involved;

• 2 popular TV programs (Rolandas Maskoliunas,

Audrius Rakauskas);

• There was a clear lack of political will and

concern inside Lithuania about idea of opening

science to society - only strong lagging behind in

implementation of the similar European

directives;

• As obvious evidence for that the feasibility study

„The analysis of need for Science

communication“ was funded and prepared in

2007.

II. The period 2009-2013

(inspired and largerly funded from by EU):

• Rising contribution from the Ministery of research and education to development of

science communication system in the period 2009-2013:

• Increased funding via special programme for the science communication and

science education oriented projects, e.g. :

• „Development and implementation of tools for the national science communication system“;

• „Young Researcher“;

• Programme for teaching gifted children (3-4 projects);

• „Green learning environment“ - for improving teaching Natural sciences;

• Biotechnology classes for gimnasia;

• Experimental equipment for practical teaching in schools, etc.

Clearly much more efforts. How about results? Are the achievements adequate?

Was the expected system developed? Does it function well?

What happened with resources for fuelling these activities further - for 2014-2020?

III.The period 2014-2020: appearance of STEM in LT

(+Citizen science, Ho2020)

• The number of science, maths and computer science students in Lithuania is 2-fold

lower the EU average.

• Unformal STEM education map:

STEM is a curriculum based on the idea

of educating students in four specific

disciplines — science, technology,

engineering and mathematics — in an

interdisciplinary and applied approach. It

relies on structured inquiry-based and

real world problem-based learning,

connecting all four of the STEM

subjects. There is also an emphasis

placed on bridging in-school and out-of-

school STEM learning opportunities.

Primary schools

Progimnasia

The scheme of distribution of hard funds from Cohesion fund in Lithuania for the period 2014-2020

CF funds

Education part

9 priority

Elementary

(Scientific cabinet for everyday lesson)

Advanced and innovative

(Scientific cabinet for everyday lesson)

Research part

1 priority

3 waleys

(Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda)

7 other regional centers

Science museum

Open access

STEM centers

5 792 400,00 Eur

„Mokiniams pritaikytų gamtos mokslų, technologijų, inžinerijos ir matematikos tyrimų ir

eksperimentinės veiklos atviros prieigos centrų sukūrimas”

https://competitions.malcolmreading.co.uk/scienceisland/news/2016/winners-revealed

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Using_the_iNatur

alist_app_in_the_field.png

Technarium (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

New venues for open science & education

Hackerspaces Citizen Science

Citizen Science Hackerspaces

Definition: general public involved in science by data collection/analysis or do-it-yourself (DIY) science, offline & online

• Major player in open science.

• As science is democratized – made inclusive to everyone – there’s increased understanding that data & knowledge belong to everyone

• Data is released back to the public, so are results

• More journals accept papers from citizen science input, participants are co-authors

• There’s a push to make more of those open access, and not pay-walled so everyone can access their own science

• Isn’t always the case yet

Open creative spaces stuffed with most diverse technology – from metal works to 3D printing, laser cutting & biohacking

• Openness – part of the hacker ethos, intrinsic value

• Most hardware & software is open source

• The process of creation & of science is shared openly with the public via blogs & repositories

• Some members are scientists who ran from traditional academia, to pursue a more open way of doing science, e.g. biohacking

• A place for informal learning. Due to the diverse community & desire to share members learn in a lot of ways, beyond what they can learn from textbooks & lectures in schools

Catlin-Groves, C.L., 2012. The Citizen Science

Landscape: From Volunteers to Citizen Sensors and

Beyond. International Journal of Zoology, 2012,

pp.1–14. doi:10.1155/2012/349630

• Citizens can help monitoring on a

large scale.

• “The areas in which it [citizen science]

has, and most probably will continue to

have, the greatest impact and potential

are that of monitoring ecology or

biodiversity at large geographic

scales”

Powell, M.C. & Colin, M., 2009. Participatory

Paradoxes: Facilitating Citizen Engagement in

Science and Technology From the Top-

Down? Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society,

29(4), pp.325–342. doi:10.1177/0270467609336308.

• Citizen science projects are often

short-lived

• “Most participatory exercises do not

engage citizens beyond an event or

a few weeks/months, and they do

not build citizens’ participatory skills

in ways that would help them

engage with scientists or policy

makers independently.” (p. 327)

Citizen science crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, volunteer monitoring or networked science:

conducted by amateur or nonprofessional scientists, described as "public participation in scientific

research", participatory monitoring and participatory action research

Citizen Science: what’s cooking in Lithuania?

Bryozoa biodiversity at Vytautas Magnus University

Lichen biohacking at Technarium hackerspace

Looking for new biosynthetic genes in lichens with students/citizens

Rediscovering diversity of fascinating, but forgotten marine

animals

What’s cooking in Lithuania? Hackerspaces/makerspaces

Technarium in Vilnius Kaunas Makerspace

Padirbtuvės in Vilnius M-LAB

...AND OTHERS

Study: Technarium hackerspace: community-enabled informal learning in science and technology

E. M. Ramanauskaite, biohacker at Technarium & education scientist

Alternative education:Learning occurs at unexpected places

More info: http://bit.ly/learnTxNx, emramanauskaite@gmail.com

Citizen science:

example of project on Bryozoan biodiversity monitoring in LT (+LV, PL)

Biology intro

• Fresh water moss animals (Bryozoa);

Colony of Plumatella repens (photo: Gintautas Steiblys)

Several classes of water organisms are prescribed to

Bryozoa or Ectoprocta type; ~5000 Bryozoa species are

known, the most numerous are seawater Bryozoans

Gymnolaemata. Phylactolaemata are freshwater moss

animals.

Four species of freshwater Bryozoa are currently registred in

Lithuania.

Open science intro • in summer 2014 m. we found a „new bryozoan

species“on the leaves of waterlillies

We have asked IBA president Patrick Wyse

Jackson about consultation. He kindly directed

our request to the world‘s best expert on

freshwater bryozoans, the author of

texbooks prof. Timothy Wood from Wright

State University, Dayton, OH, USA.

The correspondence started...

Typical length of one ndividual (zooid - it is not fully independent animal) - 0.5 mm

• Tim Wood explained, that

Bryozoa are identified using

scanning electron microscopy

of their eggs (statoblasts) – the surface

has ornament that is

specific to every species.

Tim Wood asked to send him the

sample of statobasts from Lithuania;

• Tim Wood send us his book!

• Unexpectedly, in winter the

colony of the suspected „new

species“ developed in our aquarium.

We send their pictures to prof. T. Wood

and collected statoblasts.

• T. Wood wrote the paper for the IBA

bulletins „Letters from Lithuania“ –

published in 2015 (11)

http://bryozoa.net/iba/files/IBA_Bull_11(1).pdf

Historical part

• In 2015 we were lucky to find in archives master thesis on Bryozoan

research defended in 1933

The study entitled „Contribution to the research of freshwater Bryozoa in Lithuania“ was performed by student of our university Bronė Pajiedaitė in 1931-1932 under supervision of prof. Tadas Ivanauskas

Thesis: 80 pages volume with about 30 hand-made drawings

• At least 7 species of Bryozoa were described – only 4 are registered

nowadays;

• Our „new species“ was desribed there as Plumatella repens var.

Apressa Krpln.!

• In Satarečiaus pond (Utenos reg.) all 7 species were found.

Our discovery was assessed by prof. Tim Wood

and presented for the members of International Bryozoology Asociation (after more than 80 years the results of forgotten study were OPENED!!!):

Detective search in Google:

personality of Bronė Pajiedaitė

• During the war, she rescued Jewish children - at the risk of own life,

together with Veronica Žvironaite they saved Tamara, daughter of

prof. Lazerson, from the Kaunas ghetto.

• In 2000 B. Pajiedaite was given World Righteous name and medal.

• After the war, along with other intellectuals in Kaunas Brone

Pajiedaite signed the declaration of independence of Lithuania

• Therefore she was arrested by KGB and committed suicide in

prison in 1946.

Project outline:

Title „YEC Exploring nature“ /“On Brone Pajiedaite path“

Activities (responsible partners): 1. Training of teachers (seminars,

workshops, consultations) 1+2+4; 2. Field expeditions of YEC in regional

parks for collecting samples (with GPS data base) 1;

3. Investigation and identification of the collected samples, formation of zoocollection (2+4);

4. Construction of the distribution map of bryozoan species using Epicollect programme for e-resourcing (2+3+4).

5. Project conference (1); 6. Project video materials: New version

of film on Bryozoa and movie about the Project (2);

7. Publication of project e-book (1-4)

Partners (LT, PL, LV, ...): (1) Institutions for non-formal education (Museums, science centers, nonformal education centers; (2) Vytautas Magnus university (3) Regional Parks; (4) T. Ivanauskas Zoology muzeum (Kaunas)

Target group: Young explorers clubs (schoolchildren and teachers)

Project consultant: prof. T. Wood (USA)

Statoblast pictures made by scanning electron microscopy in Lithuanian Institute of Energetics

Doc. Ingrida Šatkauskienė, dr. Simona Tučkutė. Prof. Vida Mildažiene

Cristatella muceda Plumatella fungosa

Plumatella repens

Project attractiveness

• Bryozoans are beautiful microscopic animals that can be easily found by volunteers and identified initially by the light microscopy. The site of habit can be fixed by the mobile phone programme Epicollect.

• Project idea combines real fun of nature discovery with serious research on biodiversity: quite a big chance to register hitherto unregisterd species, constructing their distribution map, forming collection for the museum (T. Ivanauskas zoomuseum and Nature Museum of Latvia supported the idea), identifying species by statoblast SEM made available for YEC.

• Prof. T. Wood has expressed wish to be the project research consultant. He is coming to project training in May, 2017 (the first training was performed in 2016).

• The intention is to make international CS project LT-LV-PL.

• Project has strong historical and civic component. The story about personality of Brone Pajiedaite can be intertwined to the educative content. On the other hand, the project will allow to honor her memory.

Igliaukos A.Matučio gimnazijos mokinių sukurtas filmukas:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8mZoE3-

nEnwTWkydVNad2N3ejg/view?usp=drive_web

• http://gmf.vdu.lt/mokytojams/klubas-mokslo-vektorius/

Registruokites!!!

AČIŪ UŽ DĖMESĮ!