Collaborative Research: RET Site: Data Sciences and Data Fluency in Scientific Data Sets (DATA3)

The DATA3 experience, a partnership between Montclair State University (MSU) and New Jersey Institute of Technology, is a new RET site focused on topics of applied data science, artificial intelligence, and software engineering research. The site will support middle school, high school, and community college educators from the Orange School District and Passaic County Community College in research experiences to explore these topics through access to the EarthCube Data Capabilities Group resources. The site will also support a pedagogical experience at MSU’s Red Hawk CS Lab, a summer camp experience in computational thinking for English learners (students who may not have English as their first language). In addition, the site will expand these professional education experiences to the larger MSU Network for Education Renewal, an already established education network at MSU servicing over 3000 teachers in northern New Jersey that reaches 260,000 students. The site will conclude with a conference to discuss Computer Science Education in Northern New Jersey, where K-12, Community Colleges and University Faculty can meet and discuss the pressing issues facing CS Education in New Jersey. A collaboration between MSU and NJIT through the EarthCube Data Capabilities Group will create resources for teachers in computer science education to help them explore exciting topics in the field. This program will help teachers explore the concepts of “Deep Learning”, an artificial intelligence technique used to try to mimic human learning. The site aims to further establish communication and collaboration between the K-14 computer science academic community and the MSU/NJIT computer science academic community. The site will engage in-service computer science teachers at the middle school, high school and community college level, with committed partners Orange School District and Passaic County Community College, in research in machine learning in scientific data sets, specifically solar weather data sets from the EarthCube research project. The experience will also guide them in distilling this experience into learning units for their classes through working with the Red Hawk Lab – a computational thinking camp for English learners.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.