2020 Data Labs Fellows

Help Build Student Data Literacy with the OOI Ocean Data Labs Project

Join our team as an OOI Data Labs Fellow

Would you like to help expand and improve the collection of data activities/resources available for undergraduate educators to incorporate OOI data into their classes? Then please consider becoming an OOI Data Labs Fellow.

Background

The National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) is advancing our ability to understand the natural world by collecting large quantities of data to address complex oceanographic processes. This expanded access to data also provides professors in the geosciences with new opportunities to engage undergraduate students in authentic data experiences using real-world data sets to teach geoscience processes.

However, many students struggle to work with data due to their limited experience and exposure to different types and sources of data, and lack the underlying skills needed to turn a data product into an interpretable result. Supporting students in engaging with the data can be challenging for professors too, due to the lack of accessible tools to easily digest and manipulate large datasets for in-class learning experiences.

The OOI Ocean Data Labs Project, with funding from NSF, is developing, testing, refining, and disseminating interactive Data Explorations, Data Lab Notebooks and other resources, that will allow professors to integrate authentic data into their teaching, helping undergraduates to successfully access and engage with OOI data.

During our 2019 Development workshops, 56 undergraduate professors learned how to effectively integrate OOI Data Labs into their courses and collaborated to develop more than 19 new data activities that feature OOI data. These activities, which we call Data Explorations, include simple interactive data visualizations that can be easily integrated into the undergraduate classroom to help students better understand concepts and build data skills. For an example, check out the Anoxic Events Data Exploration.

There are still challenges to accessing and manipulating OOI data for educational purposes. To help the community further this mission, we plan to offer 10-12 fellowships ($3,000 each) for projects that provide insight and feedback on how OOI data can be used in undergraduate teaching or that further develop new resources for undergraduate educators and students.

2020 Data Labs Fellows Options

The OOI Data Labs project encourages faculty interested in collaborating with our team to apply to become a Data Lab Fellow. Applicants should choose one of the following 3 options:

Option A – Implementation Fellows

Implementation fellows will utilize the existing collection of OOI Data Explorations to help evaluate how students build data literacy skills. Fellows will implement Explorations in their classroom, and make suggestions on how to revise the Explorations and related teaching strategies to be more effective with their students. Specifically, prospective fellows should propose a strategy to:

1. Field test one or more existing OOI Data Explorations in a course, and document your experience. Share any supplemental materials you develop as part of the field test.
2. Assess student learning and their understanding of the data. Provide feedback on the teacher and/or student experience that informs how to revise and improve the Data Exploration and Instructors’ Guide for future use.
3. Share/disseminate what you learned more broadly. Examples of dissemination strategies include, but aren’t limited to:
   1. offering a professional development workshop at a department meeting or local workshop, or presenting the work at a conference
   2. writing a blog post or creating a short video for the Data Labs website
   3. offering a webinar as part of the OOI Data Labs webinar series

Option B – Development Fellows

Development fellows will build new resources for educators and students using reusable coding notebooks (e.g. Python notebooks). Our existing collection of static Data Explorations provides an easy way for educators to incorporate OOI data in their courses, however the datasets and topics included are limited. Development Fellows will create new notebooks, and data-based and data-driven activities that provide more sustainable resources for faculty to access OOI data for teaching. To learn more about the kinds of datasets available, please check out the OOI Instrument List and the Instruments Page on the OOI website.

Prospective fellows should propose a strategy to develop and pilot new guided Python notebooks to help students and faculty use and interact with OOI data. Proposed notebook development should accomplish one or more of the following goals:

• Data Skills Building – Notebooks can help students build data science skills as they investigate oceanographic datasets and learn about the programming and data analysis skills needed, within a guided notebook activity.
• Data Analysis Tutorials – Given the complexity of the OOI dataset and the programming skills necessary to access it, notebooks that access OOI data programmatically will provide the community with templates for data ingestion and processing.
• Student Research Guides – Notebooks can help guide students in research for specific instruments or analysis techniques
• Activity Generation – Reusable notebooks can be used to generate data for an activity, whether paper-based or online, that can be easily adapted or updated by others. These can be used as classroom activities, homework, or for simple or advanced research projects.
• Real-time Lectures – Notebooks could allow instructors an easy method to update figures with the latest data and as a way to generate real-time images for lectures.

A webinar series focused on building Python skills will be offered to those fellows wishing to build Data Notebooks.

Option C – Innovation Fellows

Do you have your own idea to help sustain/build data literacy skills with your students using OOI data? Do you have an idea on how to disseminate Data Labs content to help build data literacy skills in undergraduate students more broadly? Innovation fellows will help push the envelope in areas not covered by the options above.

Application Information

Due Date: Applications are now closed for the Spring 2020 Fellows.

Who Can Apply: We invite undergraduate professors (from universities, community colleges, primary undergraduate institutions, historically black colleges and universities, etc.) to apply. Experience with OOI data and/or attendance at one of our previous OOI workshops (2016-2019) preferred but not required.

Time Commitment: We anticipate that fellows will spend approximately 40-60 hours on this effort between January 1, 2020 and June 1, 2020.

Project Review and Selection: A selection committee, external to the OOI Data Lab project team, will review submissions and make recommendations for awards.

Proposals will be selected based on the following criteria:

 

 

Questions?  Contact Janice McDonnell, mcdonnel@marine.rutgers.edu