This is a self-directed course about data and data management within an ocean research context. Follow along with these modules to understand the best practices to make you an amazing ocean researcher.
There are learning objectives for the entire course itself. If you already meet these objectives, then the course is best taken as a refresher to your knowledge. This course contains 7 Things, each of which is divided into 3 modules, for a total of 21 modules. This division is used to allow the user to pick and choose which modules they feel will be most beneficial to their learning. Each Thing has it’s own associated learning objectives, which you can use to see if the modules within are best taken as a refresher to your own knowledge, or if they are new information to be studied. This is a self-directed course, but can also be taken together with other researchers and used to facilitate discussion, or run as a semi-guided course.
This page contains the learning objectives, to help you decide which Things will best enhance your learning and thus which ones you would benefit from exploring. See this page for the Modules.
By the time you have finished the 7 Ocean Data Things you will be able to :
- Assess research data management (RDM) and data literacy needs for a particular ocean research problem, or generally.
- Identify major data sources, stakeholders, and tools in the ocean data sector.
- Apply metadata, licensing and data management planning to an ocean research problem.
Thing 1: An ocean of data
By the end of this “thing” you will be able to:
- Define research data.
- Create a data management plan (DMP).
- Understand geospatial and geographic data, and their context within the ocean sector
Thing 1 introduces emerging researchers to the idea that everything is data with the proper context. That means all of the ocean work they do could be data, and making sure that work is always kept within its geospatial context is important. Once ocean data is placed into its proper context, the basics of data management are introduced.
Thing 2: A deeper dive in ocean data
By the end of this “thing” you will be able to:
- Describe the ocean data research lifecycle.
- Create a data management plan (DMP).
- Identify major stakeholders in ocean data.
Thing 2 builds on the data context described in Thing 1, introducing data management plans and how they fit into the research lifecycle. Finally, it talks about ocean organizations and how to recognize and find them.
Thing 3: Why your data matters
By the end of this “thing” you will be able to:
- Relate data literacy practices to an ocean data problem.
- Implement a data interview.
- Use a collection of ocean data search tools
After things 1 and 2 researchers should have a solid baseline understanding of what data is contextually, how to talk about it and how to improve their data literacy. Thing 3 begins introducing more complex topics about data such as issues one might face in trying to discover data. And finally this Thing sets users up with the tools to talk about data to people.
Thing 4: Sharing and Caring with Ocean Data
By the end of this “thing” you will be able to:
- Discuss OCAP and CARE principles in Indigenous Data management.
- Explain active data management principles and feel comfortable beginning to implement them.
- Explain the importance of preservation and sharing in research data management.
- Understand when to restrict sharing for ocean data.
Thing 4 concerns the spectrum of data sharing. It emphasizes why it is important, the best practices to manage it and when things shouldn’t be shared. When considering an ocean’s worth of data it is important to lay the groundwork to understand how to protect, share and preserve that data long term.
Thing 5: On the road to metadata
By the end of this “thing” you will be able to:
- Apply controlled vocabularies to describe ocean data.
- Properly cite an ocean dataset.
- Apply an appropriate license to ocean data.
- Discuss the major metrics used to evaluate ocean data.
Thing 5 talks about properly citing data, and goes into the licenses to apply to do so. Then it introduces the first parts of the theory that unpins metadata: controlled vocabularies.
Thing 6: Managing your metadata
By the end of this “thing” you will be able to:
- Create a metadata schema.
- Develop a data researcher presence in your field.
- Explain the basic ways coding and web design can help RDM outcomes.
Thing 6 brings home the lessons about controlled vocabularies and gets into metadata, the data that describes your data. From there it explains how to translate that data from one schema to the other, and especially when the schemas have different levels of specificity.
Thing 7: Tools of the ocean data trade
By the end of this “thing” you will be able to:
- Use a collection of ocean data tools to collect, clean and analyse data.
- Recognize when data doesn’t make sense, and how to fix it
Thing 7 uses the base knowledge of data and data management plans that learners will have at this point to get into the weeds of specific ocean’s data tools, focusing on some of the most prominent and used tools.