Do you want to have your students working with real data but aren’t sure where to get data that can be used to address a wide range of questions? Have you tried using R with your students and it didn’t go well?  This workshop, taught by faculty who use NEON and other data in their classrooms and by NEON educators, is designed to provide faculty with information and resources to bring real-world, ecological data into their classroom.  NEON offers a variety of open ecological data from over 80 field sites across the United States with data applicable to a wide range of ecological subject areas, including microbes, organismal observations, biogeochemistry, remote sensing and micrometeorology.

The workshop is divided into two sections. First, short talks by three faculty who have successfully integrated NEON into their classrooms. The focus of these talks and the Q&A session will be on how individuals gained the skills/confidence to work with data and R in the classroom, techniques–including scaffolding–used to improve the student experience, and modifications for small v. large classes and lower v. upper division. Second, NEON educators will provide instruction on how to access and download NEON data (both through the portal and programmatically) and will then showcase existing data sets and teaching modules that faculty can use in their classrooms.