WK 23: NEON Education: Integrating Open Data and R into the Undergraduate Classroom

Session Organizer(s)

• Marie Faust

  National Ecological Observatory Network, Battelle
  Boulder, Colorado, United States

  Slides (PDF)

This workshop, taught by educators from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), faculty who use NEON data in their classrooms, and members of the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN) and Project EDDIE (Environmental Data-Driven Inquiry and Exploration), will provide faculty with information and resources to bring real-world, ecological data into their classroom and research projects. NEON offers a variety of open ecological data from 81 field sites across the United States, as well as open educational resources, such as teaching modules and data tutorials, and has partnered with EREN and Project EDDIE to develop collaborative teaching modules, all of which can be used to incorporate NEON datasets into undergraduate curriculum.
The workshop is divided into four sections. First, NEON educators will provide an overview of NEON’s open educational resources, including existing data tutorials and teaching modules. Second, faculty will give short talks on how they integrated open data into their classrooms, including faculty that have developed their own ways of using NEON data to compare to locally collected data as well as those who have utilized EREN-NEON Flexible Learning Projects and developed Project EDDIE teaching modules. The focus of these talks will be on how individuals gained the skills to work with data and R in the classroom, and techniques used to improve the student experience. Third, attendees will participate in a brainstorming session, where they will brainstorm the types of data and resources they could use in their curriculum. Lastly, the workshop organizers will hold a Q&A.

Presentations:

• ON DEMAND

  Moving forward with EREN, NEON, and Project EDDIE in an upcoming series of workshops and conferences
  

  Presenting Author: Matthew J. Heard – Biology, Belmont University
• ON DEMAND

  Project EDDIE module: Using NEON remote sensing data to explore relationships between topography and vegetation using R
  

  Presenting Author: Kyla Dahlin – Geography, Environment, & Spatial Sciences, Michigan State University
• ON DEMAND

  Resources and Tools for Accessing and Using NEON data in the Undergraduate Classroom
  

  Presenting Author: Marie Faust – National Ecological Observatory Network, Battelle
• ON DEMAND

  Using NEON wadeable stream data to compare to a local urban river in the introductory biology classroom
  

  Presenting Author: Marney Pratt – Biological Sciences, Smith College