Low-Cost, Open, High-Quality Raspberry Pi Citizen Science Projects as STEAM motivators

A key challenge in education is the encouragement of more students and lifelong learners to embrace STEAM education for both career development and personal enrichment. Extrinsic motivation and inspiration to engage with STEAM can have positive consequences, and there are opportunities for initiating interest through participation in various projects with varying levels of contribution, that may eventually lead to continued participation in both formal and informal education across various settings. The current work builds on experience and demonstrates an open, low-cost project using the Raspberry Pi Pico, sensors and display elements to measure soil pH and other relevant parameters in classroom, communities, field trips, or self-directed settings. The work is presented as an open design, and is highly configurable to suit the settings of specific learning and community environments. Such projects can be easily adapted to various educational environments allowing stakeholders to generate the requisite motivation among students for continued educational pursuit.