Principal Investigator: Mark Uhen
CoPrincipal Investigator(s): Laura Lukes, Christian George
Organization: George Mason University

Abstract:
With the rapid growth of “big data” in the sciences, the need to understand and manage their use in undergraduate education has become increasingly important. This project will investigate how the Paleobiology Database (PBDB), a large database of fossil information, can be leveraged to provide research experiences to undergraduates at two and four-year colleges that do not necessarily have extensive fossil collections of their own. It will also investigate how students’ attitudes towards scientific research change after engaging in research experiences using a large database such as the PBDB. Two year colleges and distance-based learning initiatives seek research-based alternatives to traditional lab activities, and “big data” provides opportunities for the hands-on science they pursue. “Big data” science initiatives, such as the Paleobiology Database (PBDB), provide affordable and easily accessible research opportunities, but the extent of their value in the undergraduate classroom has yet to be tested and documented. The PBDB contains a wealth of data on fossils entered by experts from around the world. Research skills, such as critical thinking, statistics, and computing, are essential to scientifically literate citizens. This project will guide how other large scientific databases can be used to craft research experiences for undergraduate students, and provide the means for other earth science programs to engage their undergraduates in scientific research.

Integration of research experiences into the undergraduate classroom can result in increased recruitment, retention, persistence, and motivation of science students. “Big data” science initiatives, such as the Paleobiology Database (PBDB), can provide inexpensive and accessible research opportunities, but the value of these programs in the undergraduate classroom has yet to be tested and documented. This project will: (1) evaluate how research experiences using the PBDB compare to field or lab-based research experiences; (2) establish how a large online database can be leveraged as a tool to provide effective research experiences for students at two and four-year colleges; (3) and determine how research databases can be used to teach STEM principles to non-majors, majors, and pre- service teachers. To accomplish these goals, guided research activities and a new user interface will be developed for the PBDB. The project will implement the PBDB-based research activities across two pairs of two-year and four-year institutions in Virginia that attract students with broadly diverse backgrounds. This project will assess how applicable “big data” science is to undergraduate education, specifically to what extent online databases can engage students in authentic research experiences. Research activities will focus on content crucial to scientific literacy, and will be scaffolded to build transferable skills including critical thinking, quantitative skills, and database savvy. The new PBDB interface and research activities resulting from this work will be implemented across a diversity of two- and four-year colleges, allowing the evaluation of its applicability across institution types and student populations, including distance learning versus traditional educational settings.