Improving Undergraduate Scientific Explanations: Exploring the Role of Data Literacy

The Improving Undergraduate Scientific Explanations: Exploring the Role of Data Literacy Skills in Scientific Reasoning project at Rider University is supported by an NSF IUSE grant (#2021347) awarded to Kathleen Browne in 2020. The PIs investigate whether students who participate in courses that use data sets from the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) and provide instruction in the use of "DCER" (i.e., Data Description-Claim-Evidence-Reasoning) are able to provide better explanations of scientific observations than those in a comparison group and perform better on assessments of scientific reasoning and data literacy.The SERC evaluation team consulted on the statistical analysis and conducted a process evaluation using artifact review and interviews.