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1. Results from a survey of life cycle assessment-aligned socioenvironmental priorities in US and Australian communities hosting oil, natural gas, coal, and solar thermal energy production

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/acbeda  

   Grubert, Emily ( March 2023 , Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability)

   Large energy infrastructure is often socially and environmentally disruptive, even as it provides services that people have come to depend on. Residents of areas affected by energy development often note both negative and positive impacts. This reflects the multicategory nature of socioenvironmental outcomes and emphasizes the importance of careful, community-oriented decision making about major infrastructural transitions for processes like decarbonization. Quantitative tools like life cycle assessment (LCA) seek to collect and report comprehensive impact data, but even when successful, their value for decision support is limited by a lack of mechanisms to systematically engage with values-driven tradeoffs across noncommensurable categories. Sensitivity analyses designed to help decision makers and interested parties make sense of data are common in LCA and similar tools, but values are rarely explicitly addressed. This lack of attention to values—arguably the most meaningful set of decision inputs in such tools—can lead to overreliance on single issue (e.g. climate change impact) or proxy (e.g. monetized cost) outputs that reduce the value of holistic evaluations. This research presents results from preregistered hypotheses for a survey of residents of energy-producing communities in the United States (US) and Australia, with the goal of with the goal of uncovering energy transition-relevant priorities by collecting empirical, quantitative data on people’s priorities for outcomes aligned with LCA. The survey was designed to identify diverse value systems, with the goal of making it easier for users to identify and consider value conflicts, potentially highlighting needs for further data collection, system redesign, or additional engagement. Notably, results reveal remarkably consistent priority patterns across communities and subgroups, suggesting that the common LCA practice of equal prioritization might be masking decision-relevant information. Although this effort was designed specifically to support research on energy transitions, future work could easily be extended more broadly.

    

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2. Engaging Graduate Students as Co-creators of Educational Modules on an Interdisciplinary Topic

   Tripathy, S.T. ; Kershaw, T.C. ; Chandra, K. ; Thompson, C. ; Allen, J.A. ; Denis, M. ; Liu, H. ; & Yu, T. ( June 2022 , Proceedings of the 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Co-creation in higher education is the process where students collaborate with instructors in designing the curriculum and associated educational material. This can take place in different scenarios, such as integrating co-creation into an ongoing course, modifying a previously taken course, or while creating a new course. In this Work-In-Progress, we investigate training and formative assessment models for preparing graduate students in engineering to participate as co-creators of educational material on an interdisciplinary topic. The topic of cyber-physical systems engineering and product lifecycle management with application to structural health monitoring is considered in this co-creation project. This entails not only topics from different disciplines of civil, computer, electrical and environmental engineering, business, and information sciences, but also humanistic issues of sustainability, environment, ethical and legal concerns in data-driven decision-making that support the control of cyber-physical systems. Aside from the objective of creating modules accessible to students with different levels of disciplinary knowledge, the goal of this research is to investigate if the co-creation process and the resulting modules also promote interest and engagement in interdisciplinary research. A literature survey of effective training approaches for co-creation and associated educational theories is summarized. For students, essential training components include providing (i) opportunities to align their interests, knowledge, skills, and values with the topic presented; (ii) experiential learning on the topic to help develop and enhance critical thinking and question posing skills, and (iii) safe spaces to reflect, voice their opinions, concerns, and suggestions. In this research we investigate the adaption of project-based learning (PjBL) strategies and practices to support (i) and (ii) and focus groups for participatory action research (PAR) as safe spaces for reflection, feedback, and action in item (iii). The co-creation process is assessed through qualitative analysis of data collected through the PjBL activities and PAR focus groups and other qualitative data (i.e., focus group transcripts, interview transcripts, project materials, fieldnotes, etc.). The eventual outcome of the co-creation process will be an on-line course module that is designed to be integrated in existing engineering graduate and undergraduate courses at four different institutions, which includes two state universities and two that are historically black colleges and universities. 

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3. Bringing Montage To Cutting Edge Science Environments.

   Berriman, G. Bruce ; Good, John C. ( February 2020 , NSF Cyberinfrastructure For Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) Principal Investigator Meeting)

   e describe the use of Montage to create all-sky astronomy maps compliant with the Hierarchical Progressive Survey (HiPS) sky-tesselation scheme. These maps support panning and zooming across the sky to progressively smaller scales, and are used widely for visualization in astronomy. They are, however, difficult to create at infrared wavelengths because of high background emission. Montage is an ideal tool for creating infrared maps for two reasons: it uses background modeling to rectify the time variable image backgrounds to a common level; and it uses an adaptive image stretch algorithm to convert the image data to display values for visualization. The creation of the maps involves the use of existing Montage tools in tandem with four new tools to support HiPS. We wil present images of infrared sky surveys in the HiPS scheme. 

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4. Tensions and synergies in arts‐integrated data literacy instruction: Reflections on four classroom implementations

   https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13257  

   Matuk, Camillia ; DesPortes, Kayla ; Amato, Anna ; Vacca, Ralph ; Silander, Megan ; Woods, Peter J. ; Tes, Marian ( July 2022 , British Journal of Educational Technology)

   Data‐art inquiry is an arts‐integrated approach to data literacy learning that reflects the multidisciplinary nature of data literacy not often taught in school contexts. By layering critical reflection over conventional data inquiry processes, and by supporting creative expression about data, data‐art inquiry can support students' informal inference‐making by revealing the role of context in shaping the meaning of data, and encouraging consideration of the personal and social relevance of data. Data‐art inquiry additionally creates alternative entry points into data literacy by building on learners' non‐STEM interests. Supported by technology, it can provide accessible tools for students to reflect on and communicate about data in ways that can impact broader audiences. However, data‐art inquiry instruction faces many barriers to classroom implementation, particularly given the tendency for schools to structure learning with disciplinary silos, and to unequally prioritize mathematics and the arts. To explore the potential of data‐art inquiry in classroom contexts, we partnered with arts and mathematics teachers to co‐design and implement data‐art inquiry units. We implemented the units in four school contexts that differed in terms of the student population served, their curriculum priorities, and their technology infrastructure. We reflect on participant interviews, written reflections, and classroom data, to identify synergies and tensions between data literacy, technology, and the arts. Our findings highlight how contexts of implementation shape the possibilities and limitations for data‐art inquiry learning. To take full advantage of the potential for data‐art inquiry, curriculum design should account for and build on the opportunities and constraints of classroom contexts.

   What is already known about this topic

   Arts‐integrated instruction has underexplored potential for promoting students' data literacy, including their appreciation for the role of context and real‐world implications of data and for the personal and social relevance of data.

   Arts‐integrated instruction is difficult to implement in school contexts that are constrained by disciplinary silos.

   What this paper adds

   Descriptions of four data‐art inquiry units, which take an arts‐integrated approach to data literacy.

   Examples of the synergies and tensions observed between data literacy, technology, and the arts during classroom implementation in four different schools.

   Reflections on the role of school contexts in shaping disciplinary synergies and tensions.

   Implications for practice and/or policy

   Arts‐integration offers opportunities for data literacy learning.

   Consideration of the unique resources and constraints of classroom contexts is critical for fulfilling the promises of data‐art inquiry learning.

   There is a need to develop school support specific to arts‐integrated data literacy instruction.

    

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5. Visualizing Life in the Deep: A Creative Pipeline for Data-Driven Animations to Facilitate Marine Mammal Research, Outreach, and Conservation

   https://doi.org/10.1109/VISAP52981.2021.00007  

   Kendall-Bar, Jessica ; Kendall-Bar, Nicolas ; Forbes, Angus G. ; McDonald, Gitte ; Ponganis, Paul J. ; Williams, Cassondra ; Horning, Markus ; Hindle, Allyson ; Klinck, Holger ; Beltran, Roxanne S. ; et al ( October 2021 , 2021 IEEE VIS Arts Program (VISAP))

   In this paper, we introduce a creative pipeline to incorporate physiological and behavioral data from contemporary marine mammal research into data-driven animations, leveraging functionality from industry tools and custom scripts to promote scientific insights, public awareness, and conservation outcomes. Our framework can flexibly transform data describing animals’ orientation, position, heart rate, and swimming stroke rate to control the position, rotation, and behavior of 3D models, to render animations, and to drive data sonification. Additionally, we explore the challenges of unifying disparate datasets gathered by an interdisciplinary team of researchers, and outline our design process for creating meaningful data visualization tools and animations. As part of our pipeline, we clean and process raw acceleration and electrophysiological signals to expedite complex multi-stream data analysis and the identification of critical foraging and escape behaviors. We provide details about four animation projects illustrating marine mammal datasets. These animations, commissioned by scientists to achieve outreach and conservation outcomes, have successfully increased the reach and engagement of the scientific projects they describe. These impactful visualizations help scientists identify behavioral responses to disturbance, increase public awareness of human-caused disturbance, and help build momentum for targeted conservation efforts backed by scientific evidence. 

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