The Use of Near Real-Time Oceanographic Data in Undergraduate Learning Environments

The focus of the Education and Public Engagement (EPE) component of the NSF’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) is to provide a new layer of cyber-interactivity for undergraduate educators to bring near real-time data from the global ocean into learning environments.  To accomplish this, there are six online services being built including: 1) visualization tools, 2) a lesson lab builder, 3) a concept map builder, 4) educational web services (middleware), 5) collaboration tools and 6) a resource database. The poster demonstrates the functionality of the Fall 2012 release that includes the first four of these services:

1) Interactive visualization tools allow users to interactively select data of interest, display the data in various views (e.g., maps, time-series and scatter plots) and obtain statistical measures such as mean, standard deviation and a regression line fit to select data. Specific visualization tools include a tool to compare different months of data, a time series explorer tool to investigate the temporal evolution of select data parameters (e.g., sea water temperature or salinity), a glider profile tool that displays ocean glider tracks and associated transects, and a data comparison tool that allows users to view the data either in scatter plot view comparing one parameter with another, or in time series view.

2) The interactive lesson builder tool allows users to develop a library of online lesson units, which are collaboratively editable and sharable and provides starter templates designed from learning theory knowledge.

3) The interactive concept map tool allows the user to build and use concept maps, a graphical interface to map the connection between concepts and ideas. This tool also provides semantic-based recommendations, and allows for embedding of associated resources such as movies, images and blogs.

4) Education web services (middleware) will provide an tools resource database API.