Curricular Materials

Engaging students with local ecological data in Puerto Rico

Data Jam is an initiative of the Luquillo Long -Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. The University of Puerto Rico's Luquillo LTER has compiled decades of data on the El Yunque rainforest ecosystem and made it publicly available. The Data Jam program engages middle and high school students in the process of formulating their own questions about environmental phenomena in El Yunque and then exploring, analyzing, and summarizing long-term data as evidence to support their scientific research questions. Successful Data Jam projects require students to participate in a variety of data practices that underpin the STEM field of data science. The Data Jam experience culminates with students presenting their research to their peers and Luquillo scientists at a Science Symposium in the El Yunque National Forest Visitor Center. The project aims to iteratively study and design a professional development model that engages teachers as apprentice ecological scientists, providing them with the support they need to involve their students in data-driven ecological research. Teachers participate in a week-long summer professional development program to enhance their statistical skills and prepare them to support students in their Data Jam projects. During the school year, teachers participate in virtual lab meetings with up to four colleagues and a science mentor.

The Data Jam project offers lessons and units for math and science. There are introductory units on describing simple distributions, comparing numerical distributions, comparing categorical data, and examining the relationship between numerical variables. The Data Portal contains data collected from various sources for educational purposes. In accordance with professional etiquette, data accessed from this website must be properly cited when used in your Data Jam project.