Finding real-life scientific data online often presents a herculean task for K-12 educators, and showcasing that information so that students can draw conclusions about the world around them is an even bigger challenge.
This past July, Consortium investigators at Rhode Island College held a hands-on workshop which gave area teachers access to current marine science data and provided insights on how best to visualize such work for the classroom.
“Our initial idea had been to develop modules and deploy them to schools,” says Dr. Anabela Maia, associate professor of biology at RIC. “Because of the pandemic, we felt a workshop over the summer would be a better way to reach out to teachers.”
The workshop, “Data Visualization: The Great Synthesizer,” first introduced teachers from across the state, who were compensated by the Consortium for participating, to best practices when visualizing information for students that have not yet learned the academic framework and vocabulary to make meaning of scientific data. For Maia, developing easily understandable visualizations are key to stoking sustained curiosity for science in the classroom and making apparent some of greatest challenges facing global societies today.
“Although I am a marine biologist, I teach anatomy and physiology at RIC,” says Maia. “I teach students, for example, how epilepsy affects many people globally. Because of religious and social stigmas, it is not often treated. Clear and understandable visualizations can be easy solutions to help people ignore those stigmas and lead a normal life.”
After presenting the fundamentals of developing effective data visualizations, Maia and her colleague, Dr. Sally Hamouda, assistant professor of computer science at RIC, had participants develop lesson plans that incorporated explicit teaching and hands-on activities for middle and high school students to find scientific data, scrutinize its usefulness and create graphs and other visualizations that help explain the implications of the data.
“I teach students, for example, how epilepsy affects many people globally. Because of religious and social stigmas, it is not often treated. Clear and understandable visualizations can be easy solutions to help people ignore those stigmas." - Dr. Anabela Maia, RIC
“Some of our teachers came in with no background in data visualization,” says Hamouda. “We wanted them to start thinking about how to use data visualization creatively with their students. In two days, they were able to build a data visualization activity that they can now use in their classroom.
“Many of our teacher participants have already been doing creative, low-tech activities in their classrooms to visualize data,” adds Maia. “They all had different levels of computer savviness at the start, but we were able to give them some practical skills on how to find data and use it.”
Hamouda and Maia credit success of the workshop to a group of RIC undergraduates, some supported by the Consortium, who helped plan and stage the workshop, guiding teacher participants in developing their lesson plans. The students also had to develop research posters detailing their workshop experiences.
“We wanted to get these undergraduates to understand the life cycle of research and how to manage their time in mapping out tasks for the workshop,” says Hamouda.
“It was really helpful having students of different backgrounds working on the project,” says Maia. “We had biology, mathematics and computer science majors working together. They brought different perspectives to the table about visualizing data and making it accessible.”
Matthew Spaulding, who graduated from RIC this past fall, helped facilitate the workshop, creating a website, simplechartsri.com, through which teachers can easily find datasets from local researchers and institutions and develop compelling visualizations.
“During the workshop, I helped a group of teachers make their activity,” says Spaulding. “It was interesting to see how they went about finding data. Each one went to a different website and found messy, uncleaned datasets. There was no single collection of data anywhere. They asked, ‘how can we present this data to our students?’ That was my motivation into making a single-source website that presents many different datasets which teachers don’t have to struggle to make sense of.
“The website is a good starting point for teachers developing data visualization activities,” adds Maia.
"I want to see resources that relate to anyone’s way of learning, and we were able to teach participants something different to what they expected.” - Destiny Gonzalez, RIC
Lauren Cenedella and Destiny Gonzalez, both undergraduates at RIC studying computer science and mathematics, respectively, were first tasked with gathering research materials on data visualization for teachers to reference during the workshop.
“We made an activity book about how to create graphs and visualizations, what the dos and don’ts are,” says Cenedella, who is also pursuing a degree in music. “There are not many scholarly articles on how to make effective graphical representations of data, so it was tough finding those resources. But I was able to lead teachers in how to create the best data visualizations for them.”
Teacher participants
Shawn Bailey-Gates, Science, North Smithfield HS
Tracy Bailey-Gates, Science, North Smithfield HS
Whitney Biafore, Math, Tollgate HS
Dr. James P. Burke, Engineering/Technology, Somerset Berkley Regional HS
Elvira DeLuca, Outreach & Development, Boston Latin Academy
Marta Hidalgo, Computer Science, Providence Public Schools
Ann Larson, Pre-Engineering/Computer Science, Middletown HS
Justin Kuncz, Chemistry, Cumberland HS
Alison Murray, Science, Central Falls HS
Patricia Piros, Computer Science, East Providence Career and Technical Center
Ingrid Roche, Technology, Boston Latin Academy
Tania Sen, STEM Pathways, The Juanita Sanchez Educational Complex
Katie Thompson, Math/Computer Science, LaSalle Academy
Gonzalez, a mathematics major who also works as a data analyst for AAA, is passionate about statistics and felt that participating in the workshop offered a glimpse of what she could pursue in the future.
“I was able to use some of the research techniques I’ve learned in class to develop the poster and research paper for this workshop,” she says. “It was nice to touch upon things I hope to do in the real world. I have people in their 40s alongside others just out of high school in my computer science classes, so everyone struggles to learn in their own way. I want to see resources that relate to anyone’s way of learning, and we were able to teach participants something different to what they expected.”
Now, both Hamouda and Maia are planning for the next edition of the data visualization workshop this summer.
“During this first workshop, we were not thinking in the same way as teachers do, so I think we weren’t clear enough about what our goals were,” says Maia. “We want to have more than one hands-on session so that they can first play around with data visualization tools before creating activities.
“They really appreciated learning about the science the Consortium is developing, so as more data from our work becomes available, we will want them to be able to use our real-time data in their classroom activities. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Rhode Island EPSCoR is funded by the National Science Foundation under Award #OIA-1655221. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation