Undergraduate climate education often struggles to balance conceptual understanding with authentic scientific practice. In a Fall 2025 Global Climate Change course at The University of New Mexico, we integrated the NASA-supported GLOBE Program and its GLOBE Observer Clouds Protocol as the central pedagogical framework to address this challenge. The course enrolled 40 students from geology, environmental science, and geography and emphasized three learning goals beyond climate content knowledge: (1) analyzing climate data, (2) communicating scientific information, and (3) building a sense of scientific community.

Students submitted two cloud observations per week for ten weeks using the GLOBE Observer mobile application, collecting standardized, geolocated data on cloud type, cloud cover, atmospheric conditions, contrails, and sky imagery. Observations were automatically uploaded to the global GLOBE database, contributing to a dataset of over 250 million measurements across more than 125 countries. This structure positioned students not as passive learners but as contributing citizen scientists.

To scaffold research skills, students analyzed climate and cloud research abstracts, identified unresolved questions, and developed semester-scale research projects using their own observations. Projects included drafting research questions, expected outcomes, and broader impacts, followed by structured peer and instructor review. Students then translated their projects into accessible, non-technical language for first-year students across diverse majors at the University of Oregon (UO). The UO students critically read the research proposals, posed clarifying questions to the climate students, and designed middle-school science lessons aligned with Oregon state standards. This reciprocal exchange required both groups to practice audience-aware communication while grounding lesson design in authentic undergraduate-generated data.

Final deliverables included a collaborative scientific poster and reflective analysis of students’ roles as citizen scientists and science communicators. Outcomes suggest that embedding citizen science within cross-institutional collaboration increases engagement, strengthens data literacy, and deepens understanding of how scientific knowledge moves from data collection to classroom instruction. Students reported feeling connected to a global scientific community and valued contributing to “real” data used by researchers. Challenges included coordinating inter-institutional timelines and navigating temporary disruptions to the GLOBE database, highlighting logistical considerations for replication.

This collaborative model demonstrates how structured citizen science partnerships can transform climate coursework into an authentic, community-connected scientific and pedagogical experience.