How can citizen scientists analyse data (or should we say create data) too? mmmm...Your examples of comparing notes (on asking questions, providing examples, and dispersing hugs) is a great start. Let me try and think it through a bit further ...
So ... if we can provide the tools (graphics, free association exercises - what words, what texts, what images, what sounds, what smells do you associate with this graphic, when you think about what happened when you were learning? -
... or vice versa: we could ask: What graphic would you associate with "risk", and the way it affected you and your learning? - and if we could provide an app for them to replace the label 'risk' with a thumbnail of their own graphic for risk, which they could double click to expand (and reduce) it, so that they could show it to others in a discussion, and tell the story of how and why they chose it, and what 'risk' means to them)
plus: ... we could provide different degrees of freedom for low, medium or high "risk': i.e. i) select from a given, small, set of images, or ii) find their own images, or iii) make their own images - in collages, in new graphics, etc.
and if ... participants (learners, designers, teachers) created footprints on that basis -
Then we could invite them to join in a conversation in which they could all compare notes: gestalts and icons and stories about how they arrived at their particular footprints.
They could do this on paper. It would be more fun and more interesting it they had ipads, or laptops, or mobile phones (?) or interactive tabletops, sure, but what a conversation it could turn out to be!
And ... we could add an app that allowed participants to i) superimpose, aggregate, etc, their footprints with other footprints or ii) play-back a series of footprints created at different stages of a learning event, to show the underlying narrative dynamics?
and so on ...