Educational support and synthesis based on the initial phase of the Ocean Observatories Initiative

After more than a decade of planning and construction, the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) began to provide data to the community in 2016. The Consortium for Ocean Leadership (COL) and Rutgers University have been maintaining the OOI data and have run a series of workshops for early career faculty to introduce them to the OOI data systems. There will be a funder-imposed breakpoint in OOI on October 1, 2018, when all functions associated with data delivery will transition to a new operations and management team. Data collected prior to October 1, 2018 would benefit significantly from additional evaluation and annotation. These efforts will improve OOI data quality assurance for the benefit of the OOI researcher community in the future, as well as support educational user engagement via the development of OOI data documentation and case studies. Supported data activities fall into three categories: (1) evaluation and validation of OOI datasets, (2) supporting educational engagement in the use of OOI data, and (3) synthesis and additional evaluation of the previous OOI community engagement activities.

The OOI provides an unprecedented opportunity for everyone, including scientists at all levels, to use vast amounts oceanographic data without the need to secure large funding grants or ship time. Because the OOI is open access, it allows scientists to connect with cutting edge technology and ocean data regardless of their age, gender, or physical disabilities. OOI data are also valuable for education and providing data-based learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students that improve their STEM education and experiences. Activities to be undertaken in this proposal will lift barriers to using OOI data for both the scientific and education community. The effort will also support opportunities for graduate students to share their OOI research with high school students by organizing portions of the 2019 National Ocean Sciences Bowl, which is focused on the theme of Ocean Observing.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.