Lessons Learned from a Decade of Serving Data to Students and the Public

Abstract:

NASA holds petabytes of Earth science data from a fleet of satellites going back decades. While these data can be invaluable for use in STEM education and communication (E/C), the simple fact that the archive is public is not enough. The key to successful use is to provide technological tools in strategic combination with best practices to meet the needs of various audiences. Students and teachers need access points that are specifically tailored to meet the technology resources in the classroom; citizen scientists need to feel a connection to NASA, easy-to-use technological interfaces, and are motivated by contributing to real research activities; the general public needs short, focused, easily digested tidbits.

NASA’s Earth science E/C teams have developed strategies combining audience knowledge with new technical capabilities through programs like MY NASA DATA, S’COOL, Earth Observatory, Giovanni, climate.gov, etc. The capability to offer a range of resources targeted to specific audience needs has advanced along several fronts over the last decade through use of the following key strategies:

• Regularly publishing articles, fact sheets and image captions written with greater detail than media releases to connect basic science concepts with current NASA research.
• Providing for differing levels of engagement, with basic, intermediate and advanced data access tools as well as lesson plans for grades K-2 through high school.
• Facilitating the important scientific process of asking questions once students are actively engaged though exploration and manipulation of current Earth data delivered through desktop and mobile apps..
• Providing curated data sets that students can more easily interpret.
• Assessing users’ needs through ongoing formative evaluation.
• Using Analytics to make data-driven decisions about technologies and approaches.

We will survey the range of approaches to enabling data use for STEM E/C and will share some of the key lessons learned.