Oceans of Data: Enhancing Data Literacy by Bringing Real Data into Introductory Oceanography Courses

We live in a ‘big data’ world where there are ‘oceans of data’ available for anyone to download and explore. Easily accessible data provide an opportunity to teach students standard approaches to working with data, such as finding, filtering, extracting, analyzing, interpreting and communicating that can be applied broadly across many different fields. However, many students lack the skills required to navigate and evaluate these large data sets on their own. Introducing students to ‘big data’ mining, analysis and visualization techniques in the context of oceanography enhances students’ general ability to use and evaluate data more effectively. These data skills are portable and can be applied in a variety of settings, providing students the foundation necessary for many emerging professions.

Data activities are being incorporated into introductory oceanography courses at the University of Washington (UW) with the intent of increasing student engagement and enhancing students’ ability to work with and interpret oceanographic data. New exercises exploring plate tectonics, properties of seawater and primary production are being developed to supplement the existing ‘Data Explorations’ developed by the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Data Lab Project (https://datalab.marine.rutgers.edu/). These exercises are being integrated into a lecture/lab class of 25 student at UW Tacoma and a 100-student lecture/lab class with 4 lab sections of 25 each at UW Seattle. We will present examples of these exercises and describe how the OOI (https://oceanobservatories.org/data-portal/) and other data portals are being used by students to select, visualize, analyze and learn basic oceanographic concepts like plate tectonics, water column stratification, primary production, upwelling and hypoxia. Students’ data literacy, proficiency and confidence will be monitored through pre- and post-class surveys and graded assessments throughout the quarter. By integrating big data into our classrooms, we hope to engage and empower the professionals of tomorrow with the data evaluation skills necessary to succeed in a range of fields.