Teaching Undergraduate Oceanography Courses with OOI Data: A Pilot Workshop

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

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 oceans into both formal and informal learning environments and providing a new layer of cyber-interactivity for educators. In order to correctly focus development of educational tools, the PIs ran two front-end evaluation studies on the practices and teaching needs of the oceanographic community. While 73% of undergraduate professors said they use data in their classroom, only a small subset use real-time data with their students. 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. The PIs propose to lead a workshop that will engage diverse institutions, including community colleges, Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), research laboratories, and larger research universities in an pilot intensive hands-on effort focused on developing effective teaching with data practices using OOI data assets and data visualizations tools. Participants will continue engagement virtually after the workshop as the workshop report and materials related to OOI are developed. Workshop Objectives: 1) Crosswalk OOI Science themes presented in popular introductory textbooks used in oceanography courses. Partcipants will compare themes and concepts in the OOI scientific themes document and popular published textbooks to triangulate where OOI data investigations/activities can be woven into existing courses. 2) Develop learning objectives and activity outlines of 5 data investigations (one per team) that could be developed when OOI data is available and accessible. 3) Brainstorm with the teams how best to build a community of practice with long-term working relationships and collaborations on data investigation development. The results of this workshop will make OOI data more accessible and useful for undergraduate education activities.