We developed in-class exercises that exposed students to real geoscientific data and delivered them to five sections of Physical and Historical Geology undergraduate lecture classes at two universities. Three class sections worked with data from a local source and two sections used data that had originated more distantly, or "globally." We assessed the students' engagement, knowledge retention, critical thinking, and perception of the relevance of geoscience after each exercise to determine if these outcomes differed between the students working on global data and those working on local data. The group exposed to local data had higher scores and rankings following four of the five exercises, indicating a lead in each of the four outcomes. In particular, they scored higher in answering questions with a higher Bloom's level of complexity, a measure of critical-thinking skills, and in their perception of the relevance of the geoscientific topic. Unavoidable variation between exercise topics related to the levels of contact with and manipulation of data revealed an additional observation that more contact (for example downloading data vs. opening a provided file) and more manipulation (i.e. graphing vs. viewing completed graphs) also produced more engagement, knowledge retention, and connection to the relevance of these geoscientific topics among both student groups. However, those working with local data continued to have higher outcome scores and rankings than those working with global data.