A Mixed Methods Study on CBAM and the Adoption of Thin Client Computers by Adolescents

Although stages of change and adoption of innovation dynamics have been examined for adult populations, comparable research for adolescents is limited. Applying a change instrument grounded in Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) to an adolescent population, this study investigates perceptions of 45 middle school students who used thin client portable computers in a one-to-one program at home and at school for 3 years. A mixed methodology design identified which of the 7 stages of concern students passed through and why some students adopted the innovation more readily than others. The Change Facilitator Stages of Concern Questionnaire, a modified version of CBAM, was used to collect quantitative data from students at the beginning and at the end of 6th grade. Qualitative interviews from 8 purposively selected students, their parents, and their teachers supplemented the survey data in the final year of the program. To guide this study, three questions were investigated: (1) What stages of concern were evident? (2) To what extent can variation in these stages of concern be explained by select demographic measures? (3) Based on the qualitative interviews, how do select students describe their adoption? Three distinct adoption pathways emerged in both the population and the sample. In Pathway 1, progressions occurred from lower to higher stages; in Pathway 2, no change between Pre- and Posttests; and in Pathway 3, backwards movement occurred through the stages. Unexpectedly, only 5 of the 7 stages of change were high stage scores. Regression analysis also revealed two significant findings: first, in the posttest analysis, the dependent variable (free lunch) suggested that poverty levels may influence a slower progression through CBAM stages; and second, there was a significant difference in pre- and posttest second high stage scores for the dependent variable (gender), suggesting that adolescent males gained nearly two more stages of change than did females. This study appears to be the first adaptation of the Change Facilitator Stages of Concern for adolescents. Both quantitative and qualitative evidence explained that adolescent pathways differ fundamentally from those of adults

Towards Linked Data for Oceanographic Science: The R2R Eventlogger Project, Controlled Vocabularies, and Ontologies at The MBLWHOI Library

Objective: Research vessels coordinated by the United States University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (US-UNOLS) collect data which are considered important oceanographic science research products. The NSF-funded Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) project aims to improve access to these data and diminish barriers to their use. One aspect of the R2R project has been to develop a shipboard scientific event logging system, Eventlogger, which incorporates best practice guidelines, controlled vocabularies, a cruise metadata schema, and a scientific event log. Eventlogger facilitates the eventual ingestion of datasets into oceanographic data repositories for subsequent integration and synthesis by investigators. The careful use of controlled vocabularies and ontologies is an important feature of this system, as the use of internationally-informed, consensus-driven controlled vocabularies will make data sets more interoperable, discoverable and reusable. Methods: The R2R Eventlogger project is led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the management of the controlled vocabularies is led by the Data Librarian in the Marine Biological Laboratory/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MBLWHOI) Library. The first target vocabulary has been one for oceanographic instruments. Management of this vocabulary has thus far consisted of reconciling project vocabulary terms with the more widely used community vocabularies served by the NERC Vocabulary Server v2.0 (NVS2.0): terms included in the SeaDataNet Device Catalogue (L22) and the SeaDataNet Device Category vocabularies (L05). Rather than adopt existing community terms, it is more often the case that local terms are mapped by the Data Managers in the NSF-funded Biological and Chemical Oceanographic Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) to community terms, which preserves any important information and meaning investigators impart through the process of assigning these local terms, and has less impact on researchers. New terms, those that cannot be mapped to the existing community vocabularies (often custom, or modified instruments), are submitted for review to the SeaVOX governance process for addition to the community vocabularies. These vocabularies and their mappings are an important part of the aforementioned Eventlogger system. Before a research cruise, investigators configure the instruments they intend to use for their science activities. The instruments available for selection are provided by the MBLWHOI Data Librarian, who curates UNOLS ship-specific lists of standard shipboard instruments using terms for instruments from the R2R Eventlogger Project Vocabulary. Nonstandard shipboard instruments a researcher or investigator wishes to use can also be added, and these instrument terms will eventually be inducted into the R2R Eventlogger Project Vocabulary. Results: Eventlogger is currently being tested across the UNOLS fleet. A large submission of suggested instrument terms to the SeaDataNet community listserv is currently in progress. New tools for facilitating the management, mapping, and use of these controlled vocabularies are being developed, and new projects with eager partners are envisioned. Ideas for future controlled vocabularies for the ocean science community include: Cruise IDs, Persons, and Ships. Conclusions: The promotion and use of controlled vocabularies and ontologies will pave the way for linked data in oceanographic science. By mapping local terms to authoritative and community-accepted terms, links are created whereby related data sets can be better discovered, and utilized. Librarians have an established history of working with controlled vocabularies and metadata. Libraries, have and will continue to, serve as centers for information discovery as well as a natural home for the management of standards

IOC contributions to international, interdisciplinary open data sharing

Author Posting. © Oceanography Society, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 23, no. 3 (2010): 140-151, doi: 10.5670/oceanog.2010.29Over the last 50 years, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) has had a profound influence upon the willingness of United Nations Member States to share and provide access to their international and interdisciplinary oceanographic data. (For an early history and review of IOC achievements, see Roll, 1979.) Ocean science over the last half century has been transformed from a predominately modular, single-disciplinary, and individualistic science into a national and multinational interdisciplinary enterprise (Briscoe, 2008; Powell, 2008). The transformation began slowly, but as computing power increased, the pace accelerated, and along with these alterations came shifts in cultural practices regarding the sharing of data

A Mediterranean undercurrent seeding experiment (AMUSE) : part II: RAFOS float data report, May 1993-March 1995

This is the final data report of all acoustically tracked RAFOS data collected in 1993-1995 during A Mediterranean Undercurrent Seeding Experiment (AMUSE). The overall objective of the program was to observe directly the spreading pathways by which Mediterranean Water enters the North Atlantic. This includes the direct observation of Mediterranean eddies (meddies), which is one mechanism that transports Mediterranean Water to the North Atlantic. The experiment was comprised of a repeated high-resolution expendable bathythermograph (XBT) section and RAFOS float deployments across the Mediterranean Undercurrent south of Portugal near 8.5°W. A total of 49 floats were deployed at a rate of about two floats per week on 23 cruises on the chartered Portuguese-based vessel, Kialoa II, and one cruise on the R/V Endeavor. The floats were ballasted for 1100 or 1200 decibars (db) to seed the lower salinity core of the Mediterranean Undercurrent. The objectives of the Lagrangian float study were (1) to identify where meddies form, (2) to make the first direct estimate of meddy formation frequency, (3) to estimate the fraction of time meddies are being formed, and (4) to determine the pathways by which Mediterranean Water which is not trapped in meddies enters the North Atlantic.Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation through Grant No. OCE-91-01033 to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Grant No. OCE-91-00724 to Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and by the Luso-American Foundation for Development through Grant No. 54/93 to the University of Lisbon

Ocean data publication cookbook

This cookbook is an outcome of the 5th session of the SCOR/IODE/MBLWHOI Library Workshop on Data Publication and is posted here by permission of UNESCO.Executive summary: This “Cookbook” has been written for data managers and librarians who are interested in assigning a permanent identifier to a dataset for the purposes of publishing that dataset online and for the citation of that dataset within the scientific literature. A formal publishing process adds value to the dataset for the data originators as well as for future users of the data. Value may be added by providing an indication of the scientific quality and importance of the dataset (as measured through a process of peer review), and by ensuring that the dataset is complete, frozen and has enough supporting metadata and other information to allow it to be used by others. Publishing a dataset also implies a commitment to persistence of the data and allows data producers to obtain academic credit for their work in creating the datasets. One form of persistent identifier is the Digital Object Identifier (DOI). A DOI is a character string (a "digital identifier") used to provide a unique identity of an object such as an electronic document. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata may change. Referring to an online document by its DOI provides more stable linking than simply referring to it by its URL, because if its URL changes, the publisher need only update the metadata for the DOI to link to the new URL. A DOI may be obtained for a variety of objects, including documents, data files and images. The assignment of DOIs to peer-reviewed journal articles has become commonplace. This cookbook provides a step-by-step guide to the data publication process and showcases some best practices for data publication

The advantages of machine aided co-reference resolution for research cruise metadata

Presented at Linking Environmental Data and Samples, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Canberra, Australia, 29 May - 2 June 2017One of the central incentives of deploying linked open data is the opportunity to leverage the linkages between source datasets to retrieve related information. The Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) reaps these benefits by linking its cruise-level metadata to the Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) – the trusted, authoritative source for cruises undertaken by the U.S. academic research fleet. Even though the process of identifying a link between these two repositories is easy for a human, this talk will explore the advantages of using a machine-aided process to suggest links to R2R cruises to a BCO-DMO data manager.NSF #143557

An Ontology Pattern for Oceanographic Cruises: Towards an Oceanographer\u27s Dream of Integrated Knowledge Discovery

EarthCube is a major effort of the National Science Foundation to establish a next-generation knowledge architecture for the broader geosciences. Data storage, retrieval, access, and reuse are central parts of this new effort. Currently, EarthCube is organized around several building blocks and research coordination networks. OceanLink is a semantics enabled building block that aims at improving data retrieval and reuse via ontologies, Semantic Web technologies, and Linked Data for the ocean sciences. Cruises, in the sense of research expeditions, are central events for ocean scientists. Consequently, information about these cruises and the involved vessels has to be shared and made retrievable. For example, the ability to find cruises in the vicinity of physiographic features of interest, e.g., a hydrothermal vent field or a fracture zone, is of primary interest for oceanographers. In this paper, we use a design pattern-centric strategy to engineer ontologies for OceanLink. We provide a formal axiomatization of the introduced patterns and ontologies using the Web Ontology Language, explain design choices, discuss the re-usability of our models, and provide lessons learned for the future geo-ontologies