Oceans in the News: Using Data to Evaluate Media Stories on Polar Science

Polar environments are undergoing climatic changes that include rising temperatures, sea ice loss, and with it altered trophic dynamics, species distributions/extinctions, and shifts in phenology that cascade through to human experience. The challenge for educators is to communicate the interdependent scope, magnitude and human relevance of these issues given the inaccessibility of polar regions. To this end, we have developed an active learning course for undergraduate non-science majors that uses publically available data resources (e.g. NSIDC and LTER DataZoo) to equip students with skills for evaluating real-world polar science questions that they encounter in the media. Students work through a series of modules (physical, biological, and social), each focused on a news story that students evaluate through data visualization. Based on their analysis using, the students reason whether the claims presented in the news source are supported by the available data. Here, we will present lessons learned through offering this course three times at the University of Delaware. Contrary to our expectations, students quickly mastered many of the “technical challenges” associated with processing data, but struggled with the “narrative challenge” of identifying the perspective and arguments made in the news source. We found that devoting class time to exploring narrative elements of a story improved student abilities to effectively reason with data.