Unlocking Long-Term Engagement with Citizen Science: Communication Strategies Driven by Complex Thinking Under an AI-Assisted Approach

Citizen science projects continue to grow in popularity and diversity of modalities with an ever-increasing scope. In addition, these projects develop participants’ complex thinking competency. However, their involvement is mostly limited to crowdsourcing tasks, resulting in short periods of participation, which are associated with low motivation. This article presents communication strategies to sustain the long-term engagement of participants and stakeholders in citizen science projects with complex thinking as a driver. The research methodology was Cognitive Task Analysis with the Think-Aloud Protocol, where the authors were actively involved in the study with AI assistance. After multiple iterations between the authors and the AI assistant, the findings were: a) effective communication involves clear articulation of goals, bridging the gap between scientific language and layperson understanding, fostering ownership and co-creation; b) the critical analysis of ChatGPT results encompassed factors such as educational and professional backgrounds, multidisciplinary involvement, and technical issues, creating an ideal fostering of discussions, constructive work, critical thinking, and knowledge enrichment; c) using ChatGPT to design strategies triggered the development of various sub-competencies of complex thinking to achieve comprehensive results.