Data Sharing Projects: A Critical Analysis

Introduction for Technical Reports

One of the most interesting educational uses of the Internet is as a method for engaging science students. By collecting and sharing data with students in other locations around the world, students can undertake a type of inquiry that more closely resembles real science than what they typically do in the science classroom.

There are now several "network science" projects of this sort, involving thousands of students across a range of grade levels. How are these projects doing? What are teachers and students likely to find on project sites when they go there? If they download data from one of these sites, what are they likely to find in those data and what kind of tools will they need to explore them?

To answer these questions, we commissioned a set of technical reports that examine and critique instructional tasks and data from five projects: EnviroNet, GLOBE, Journey North, and Water on the Web. These reports, written by Rolf Biehler and Stefan Schweynock, were part of a study funded by the National Science Foundation to learn more about the challenges that statistics and data analysis pose to teachers and students.

A primary audience for these reports are the designers of the specific projects reviewed. They will be interested, in particular, in what the report authors found in project data and what skills and tools were necessary to answer some of the questions that the projects' curricula pose to students. In short, Biehler and Schweynock found some interesting trends in the data, but getting at these were typically not a simple matter and probably beyond the abilities of students if unassisted.

These reports will also be useful to developers of other current and future network science projects and to educational designers working to involve K-12 students in the analysis of real data. One of the most critical and difficult aspects of creating successful data-centered curricula is selecting data and questions that are appropriate for students. This is much harder than many imagine. The analyses Biehler and Schewynock perform and the questions they raise in these reports can serve as useful examples of what designers should be asking themselves as they consider using various problems and data sets with students.

Cliff Konold, Principal Investigator

Click here to read the technical reports