Collaborative Research: FIRE: Making Meaning from Geoscience Data: A Challenge at the Intersection of Geosciences and Cognitive Sciences

这一促进教育跨学科研究(FIRE)项目是哥伦比亚大学和坦普尔大学的合作项目，旨在了解本科生和科学家将地球科学数据转化为解释和预测的感知和认知过程。FIRE奖的首席研究员是一名地球科学家，她将与空间认知科学的导师合作，继续发展她在这一领域的专业知识，特别是眼球跟踪。研究人员提出了两项使用眼球跟踪和大声思考协议的研究。第一项研究将对学生进行调查？在解释已知易受误解的数据集(来自地形/水深测量)时的感知和推理。研究二是一项干预性研究，测试提供假设模板是否有助于学生解释海洋盐度区域的三维数据量。这项研究将由空间认知、数据认识论、可视化和地球科学方面的专家进行评估。在地学领域，许多学生很难学习解释地图和大量空间数据所需的技能。这些技能是地球科学家所做的工作以及如何在这一学科中提供知识的核心。这项研究可能会改进学生如何学习将地球科学数据可视化并根据数据解释提出主张所需的技能。该项目显然促进了地球科学的发现，促进了教与学。这项研究也可能对其他科学、技术、工程和数学领域的学习产生影响，这些领域对学生的可视化能力有很高的要求。

This Fostering Interdisciplinary Research in Education (FIRE) project is a partnership between Columbia University and Temple University that seeks to understand the perceptual and cognitive processes by which undergraduate students and scientists transform earth science data into explanations and prediction. The principal investigator of this FIRE award, a geoscientist, will be working with a mentor in spatial cognitive science to continue to develop her expertise in this area and eye tracking in particular. The researcher proposes two studies using eye-tracking and think aloud protocols. The first study will investigate students? perceptions and reasoning as they interpret a data set (from topography/bathymetry) that is known to be subject to misinterpretation. Study two is an intervention study, testing whether providing hypothesis templates will help students interpret a three-dimensional data volume in the area of ocean salinity. The research will be evaluated by experts in spatial cognition, epistemology of data, visualization, and earth science.In the geosciences, many students have a difficult time learning the skills that are necessary to interpret maps and large amounts of spatial data. Such skills are central to what geoscientists do and how knowledge is rendered in this discipline. This study could lead to improvements in how students learn the skills necessary to visualize geoscience data and make claims based on data interpretation. The project clearly advances discovery and promote teaching and learning in the geosciences. The research may also have implications in the learning in other fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that place high demands on a student's visualization abilities.