NCEAS-at-ESA August 4 to August 7, 2013

Submitted by french on 22 July 2013 - 5:29pm

The Annual Ecological Society of America (ESA) Conference is being held in Minneapolis, Minnesota in early August.  If you are attending the conference, NCEAS hopes that you will join Mark Schildhauer, director of computing, and Matt Jones, director of informatics research, for one or more of their workshops, ignite sessions, or special sessions (outlined below).  NCEAS Working Groups are also presenting two Contributed Oral Papers listed below on engaging undergraduate students in Ecology and Big Data. 

Don't miss the NCEAS-SESYNC 'Pathways to Opportunity' Mixer scheduled for Wednesday, August 7 from 6:30 - 8:30 pm at the Vincent A Restaurant, just up the street.  No RSVP required. 

Sunday, August 4, 2013

8:00 AM-11:30 AM

Workshop (WK 8): Managing Ecological Data for Effective Use and Re-use: A Workshop for Early Career Scientists

The purpose of this workshop is to give attendees a set of practical tools for organizing and sharing their data through all parts of the research cycle.  The target audience is early-career scientists but is open to any researchers who would benefit from developing better data management skills.  Topics will include data structure, quality control, data documentation, the importance of good data management practices for data sharing, collaboration, and data re-use. 

This workshop will highlight the use of open software tools for conducting open science in ecology.  Through a series of hands-on activities, participants will explore approaches to accessing data from the DataONE federation in the R analytical system, and then conduct basic data assessment, summarization, and visualization using that data.  We will also expose students to various R libraries available from the rOpenSci project for accessing data, and to the use of R for generating data documentation and archiving data in DataONE-compatible repositories.  We are targeting early-career scientists. 

This workshop will give attendees a set of practical tools for easily creating ecological metadata, a critical component of managing data effectively.  Participants are encouraged to bring laptops for practicing their use of DataUp and Morpho. 

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Ignite Session (IGN 2-4): The virtual, expanding world of data provided by ONEDrive

Location:

M100IB, Minneapolis Convention Center

Organizer:

Matthew B. Jones*

Speakers:

Dave Vieglais, Roger Dahl, Ryan Kroiss, Christopher Brumgard

Brief Description:

ONEDrive instantly updates as data are shared via repositories throughout the world, and provides customized views of just the right data that you need for analysis and modeling, using the familiar tools on your desktop.  ONEDrive appears as just another folder on your computer, but is really a window into the deep well of data available from DataONE. 

See how to use Morpho not only to share and discover scientific data, but also to create and publish the detailed, searchable metadata that our fellow researchers (and future selves!)  need to use and reuse these resources effectively. 

Contributed Oral Papers (COS 41-3): The fractured lab notebook: Undergraduates are not learning ecological data management at top US institutions

Location:

L100E, Minneapolis Convention Center

Organizer:

Carly Strasser

Brief Description:

Our objectives were to create exercises that, by working with real data, enhance students' ecological content knowledge and critical thinking skills, engage students in the synthesis of ecological knowledge, and instill in students an understanding of the value of publically-available archived data.  Our assessments indicated that students gained a lot in terms of ecological content knowledge and process skills from our exercises, and they liked doing them. 

Link:

http://eco.confex.com/eco/2013/webprogram/Paper40894.html

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

9:00 AM

Contributed Oral Papers (COS 58-4): Engaging undergraduate students in ecological investigations using large, public datasets: lessons-learned by a ‘teaching with big-data’ working group

Location:

L100F, Minneapolis Convention Center

Organizer:

Tom A. Langen

Brief Description:

As we transition to an era of better digital data management, are up-and-coming scientists being trained in best practices?  Are they learning about data, metadata, and reproducibility?  In this study, we sought answers to these questions by surveying instructors of undergraduate ecology courses at institutions likely to be training future ecology graduate students.  We found that, in general, data management topics are not being covered in undergraduate ecology courses for a wide range of reasons. 

Link:

http://eco.confex.com/eco/2013/webprogram/Paper42975.html

6:30PM-8:30 PM

‘Pathways to Opportunity’ NCEAS-SESYNC Mixer

Location:

Vincent A Restaurant

1100 Nicollet Mall

Minneapolis, MN

Organizers:

The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)

and the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC)

Brief Description:

Join us for hors d'oeuvres and drinks.  Learn about opportunities at the Synthesis Centers.