These questions were the focus of the conference "Selbstgewusst! Creating Knowledge Together". The program of the four-day online conference (November 5-6 and 12-13, 2020) was filled with presentations, lectures and workshops. In virtual conference rooms, the participants talked about citizen science projects, citizen labs, science shops and much more. The titles of the sessions ranged from "Participation in Schools: The Role of Participation Formats in Competence Development of Children", "The Challenge of Climate and Nature: Sustainable Thinking and Acting through Participation?!" to "Project presentations: Citizen Laboratories and Service Learning".
We from the Center for Citizen Science had a prominent session slot on the very first day entitled "Participation how and why? Current insights and perspectives". Immediately after the welcome, we presented our experiences and lessons learned on the topic "Cooperation between science and schools". We discussed the organisation and implementation of the Austrian research competition "Citizen Science Award" (CSA) and tried to answer the central questions of the conference. The aim of the award is to support researchers and to motivate school classes and individuals to participate in research. Through exciting citizen science projects, different knowledge is conveyed to the population. In recent years, certain factors have proven to be necessary for a successful competition of this kind. The projects, rules and prize money must be communicated clearly and should not lead to any misunderstandings, otherwise the entire competition will suffer. The fact that there is no "perfect" period for all students to participate is a fact that has to be taken into account. School classes either have exams and need time to study or there are vacations. We have made good experiences with the three-month research phase from April to the end of the school year. At the moment we are already getting ready for next year!
All in all, we experienced an exciting conference and a committed community. We hope to be part of it again next year. By the way, all presentations are available on the conference website.