The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) and the OOI Ocean Data Labs are serious collaborators.  While two different NSF-funded initiatives share portions of their names, their roles are different, but complementary.  The OOI provides data that the OOI Ocean Data Labs Project uses to prepare instructional materials for undergraduate classrooms. It’s a collaboration that helps to expand the use of OOI data into classrooms and into the hands of potential future researchers.

To honor this collaboration, the OOI has launched a new Discourse forum “OOI in the Classroom“ where educators can share their experiences teaching with OOI data and establish dialogues with their colleagues. This forum is designed to offer an online area to share ideas, tell tales, and work to develop supportive, instructive, and challenging classroom experiences.

The OOI Ocean Data Labs also hosted an in-person workshop at the recent Ocean Sciences Meeting to introduce faculty to the community-developed collection of OOI Data Explorations and the online OOI Lab Manual. The workshop invited participants to integrate OOI data into undergraduate courses (Greengrove et al., 2020), to not only teach concepts in oceanography but to build transferable skills.

Join the OOI Ocean Data Labs mailing list to learn of the latest innovations and lesson plans developed by this network of educators.  There you will be notified about an upcoming workshop (June 2-5, 2024 at Old Dominion University) to develop new resources as the Coastal Pioneer Array is deployed in its new location in the southern Mid-Atlantic Bight.  Also, sign on to Discourse to continue the conversation.