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Engaging Volunteers
Engaging Volunteers

Use the ladder-approach in Water Reporter to train and engage your volunteers in water(shed) monitoring programs

Commons Support avatar
Written by Commons Support
Updated over a week ago

Water Reporter as an engagement tool helps Champions engage their stakeholders and volunteers as citizen scientists, not just community activists. The Water Reporter on-boarding process is pretty self-explanatory, but we've laid out the steps here for easy reference.

When an individual wants to join your group in Water Reporter he or she will:

  1. Download the Water Reporter App from iTunes or GooglePlay.

  2. Create an account, ideally with a true name but an alias will work as well.

  3. Join your organization.

Observational Monitoring

After an individual has created an account, he or she can easily start sharing geo-located posts with your group.

  1. Click the blue edit circle to start a post.

  2. Confirm or select the location of the photo.

  3. Enter in comments and/or hashtags to describe the photo.

  4. Add a photo to the post.

  5. Tap a group to share the post with it.

  6. Click save.

The post will be added to the individual's feed as well as the assigned organization and the watershed where it was taken. Any posts shared to an organization will be exportable by that organization and available to add to embeddable maps.

Data Source Collection Forms

If you want any individuals to access your data source collection forms they will need to be assigned as a contributor for that data source. Only a group administrative owner can assign contributor status to someone. 

Add a new contributor to a data source

To add a new contributor:

  1. Enter your data source.

  2. Select the Contributor Tab.

  3. Type in the name of a basic user. Click save.

Those users will have access to the data source to contribute data via a collection form, but that's it. Also remember, someone has to have a Water Reporter account before they can be added as a contributor! As an administrative owner you will be able to verify, edit, or delete any submitted forms before they are fully added to the data source.

Contributor add a new data sample via the App

Once an individual has been added as a contributor, the data entry process is fully in their hands.

  1. Open the Water Reporter app.

  2. Click the blue edit button.

  3. Select the data source under "Collect Monitoring Data"

  4. On the "Edit Sample" page, enter in your readings for all relevant fields. Click the check mark to save your sample.

Contributor add a new data sample via the website

  1. Sign in via WaterReporter.org.

  2. On your dashboard, scroll to and select the data source under "Contribute Data"

  3. Click "Sample"

  4. Click the green plus sign.

  5. Enter your readings for all relevant fields. Click the check mark to save your work.

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