Data science training for today’s oceanographers: Curriculum development across disciplines at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

To support research transparency, reproducibility, and data and software sharing, it is imperative for today’s oceanographers to have practical training in data science. In the past few years Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has supported an increasing number of informal learning opportunities for data science skills through workshops and tutorials. In 2017 WHOI became a member in The Carpentries, an international organization with foundational data science training well-recognized across scientific disciplines. However, in addition to foundational skills, there is a need for learning best practices and skills in our ocean sciences domain. Here we describe WHOI’s Data Science Training Camp, developed with the support of WHOI’s Academic Programs Office, WHOI’s Ocean Informatics initiative, MBLWHOI Library, WHOI Information Services, and BCO-DMO. We delivered the curriculum in two half-day sessions each with two modules. The first session requires that participants from different departments sit together, while the second has participants from the same department sit together to discuss discipline-specific needs. The first module provides an overview with opportunities to discuss best practices organized in three topics: data management, software development, and project management and collaboration. Subsequent modules dive into these topics, with the fourth module focusing on the ocean sciences. Hands-on activities in the ocean-specific module include learning about metadata standards by browsing a community repository and learning about sharing workflows by using web-based APIs to import data directly into their preferred data analysis environment. Results from a post survey indicate that participants attained the intended level of learning, between “Understand” and “Apply” (on Bloom’s taxonomy). Our materials are available online for sharing with other oceanographic institutions, linked from our syllabus (https://tinyurl.com/WHOI-Data-Science-syllabus).