Dr. Ragupathy Kannan (TAS, 2019) received a 2024-2025 Fulbright Scholar award for his project, Citizen Science: Using e-Learning Platforms to Promote Biodiversity Awareness in Malaysia. This is his fourth Fulbright award! As a biology professor, his desire was to connect his Arkansas students in real-time to his biodiversity monitoring and outreach activities in species-rich Malaysia.  

Dr. Kannan established a bioblitz project in iNaturalist and had his biology and ecology students at the University of Arkansas–Fort Smith track his observations in real time. The bioblitz results can be viewed here. Approximately 40 students (college freshmen and juniors) followed Dr. Kannan, and 841 observations were recorded. A sampling of reference photos of the species he observed is shown on the right, and the full gallery can be viewed here. 

Through engaging students in his field observations, Dr. Kannan hopes that students develop an awareness and an appreciation for biodiversity conservation and monitoring. Follow-up activities are planned in the form of community iNaturalist nature walks and class presentations on the role played by iNaturalist in biodiversity monitoring and education. A group of Dr. Kannan’s students have already published on this topic.

Dr. Kannan hopes to get the message out that “iNaturalist is an important online tool for biodiversity monitoring. It has the potential to get students hooked and may make future conservationists. I encourage all teachers to get their students involved in this.” Watch this tutorial to learn more about how to use iNaturalist.

If you’re interested in other citizen science observation platforms, read more about Cornell Lab’s platform eBird in this article by Dr. Kannan.

Congratulations on another Fulbright award, Dr. Kannan! Given that Citizen Science was the topic chosen by our alumni for our focused content in 2024, this work is especially relevant, and we are newly inspired!

In 2020, the Alumni Association hosted their own bioblitz. Check out the results here.