OOI Teaching with Data: Bringing OOI Data into Undergraduate Oceanography Courses

The Ocean Observing Initiative (OOI) Education and Public Engagement (EPE) Implementing Organization was established and tasked with bringing professionally collected, real and near real time data, images and video of our Earth's ocean into both formal and informal learning environments and providing a new layer of cyber-interactivity for educators. In previous surveys of undergraduate faculty who might use OOI data in their classrooms, the majority of professors surveyed (73%) indicated that they have used data in their teaching within the last year. They also reported that they found it useful to integrate data in their teaching to help students draw conclusions from evidence and that they are using online archived data, journal publications, and data that the professors had collected themselves. A small subset of professors indicated that they use online real-time data. When asked where they could use the most help in improving their practice with teaching with data, responses varied by career stage. Most importantly, it was determined that there is a need for further exploration into how to effectively integrate data into teaching and how to create data visualization tools that help undergraduate professors meet the demands of teaching 21st century science skills and practices.

In response to the needs of potential OOI users and to enhance the value of the OOI infrastructure, Rutgers will host two hands-on workshops focused on developing effective teaching with data practices using OOI data assets and data visualizations tools. These three-day programs, will engage twenty faculty from diverse institutions, including community colleges, Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), research laboratories, and larger research universities, as well as a team of pedagogical experts to test prototype data investigations/visualizations using OOI data streams and focused on geology and chemistry.

Learning directly from data has important pedagogical advantages, and analyzing data and identifying patterns have become core workforce skills for the 21st century. These two workshops will help establish a community of practice around teaching with OOI data, enhancing the value of the OOI. A long term goal of the workshops is to improve the educational outcomes for diverse students at a variety of institutions. Providing these students with opportunities to learn data management and analysis skills will support NSF efforts to broaden the scientific workforce and to train students for STEM-related positions.