Orange
Data Science Explorations on OpenEvo
Making open science data sets and workflows accessible to all!
The free, open source platform, Orange Data & Text Mining, provides a unique opportunity to engage the OpenEvo educational design concept, through diverse data science explorations.
Download Orange now,
and get started on your data explorations!
Developing resources on OpenEvo
Orange is most useful when it is used widely across the curriculum. This ensures widespread competencies among teachers and students, and therefore lower ‘entry costs’ per exploration. In this context, we are working with an interdisciplinary range of professional scientists, as well as experts in school and community-based research, to curate, create, and evaluate the learning opportunities provided by Orange.
Open data sets from MPI-EVA researchers and collaborators
The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) is a world-renowned institute in understanding human and non-human primates around the world. Expert researchers continuously curate open data sets across wide ranging aspects of human origins, and the evolution of primate and human cultural diversity. Our initial project is focused on developing resources around primate cognition research, while future work is planned across the departments of the institute.
Focal project: Species and Individuals
How can we understand variation in the minds of primates?
We are currently focusing on developing tools for the exploration of an open data set of basic great ape cognition tasks from the Wolfgang Kohler Primate Research Center (WKRPC), and the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at MPI-EVA.
The developing resources integrate multiple data sets to enable a simple introduction to Orange data science, while also providing an overview of the aims and methods of the WKPRC. Students can be supported in engaging at any level, from basic data exploration, through ANOVA, correlational analysis, and even predictive modelling.
Learn more in the teachingbase entry.
In need of exploration
The landscape of opportunities from combing Orange with MPI-EVA data sets is truly expansive. Because we are focused on open data sets, motivated students or researchers don’t need to wait for us to develop full teaching materials. We link below to some of the exciting data sets you can try to explore. If you make progress – share it with us and we’ll see how we can include your workflows or project examples in our collection.
Evolutionary genetics
Primatology
- Primate genomes (see evolutionary genetics page)
Human origins
- Curating hominid morphology data (also with primatology)
Archaeogenetics
Linguistics and cultural evolution
Human behavior, ecology, and culture
- Pemba forest cover: satellite images and community perceptions
Orange for Community Science Lab devleopment
In collaboration with the University of Leipzig, we also explore how Orange can support the development of student-driven, school-based Community Science Labs (CSL). That is, spaces and processes for students to use theoretical perspectives and data-driven methods to reflect on needs and opportunities for improving their own school and community. Once a school community or project group decides to explore CSL development, they can begin by focusing on basic capacity building. This means, first, getting community input for the development of an explicit Data Management Plan, specifically for CSL projects. Simultaneously, or as possible, other students in the CSL project can work with the school library or data science teacher to develop, organize, curate, and promote a school data and workflow library, including both expert curated resources for Orange, as well as local project entries.
Participatory studies for CSL-Data Managment Planning
If a school is aiming to support a student-driven CSL, the first step is to explore aspects of basic data management planning (DMP) within the community. This provides a focal project that enable the use of Orange to organize, explore and communicate their findings.
School data and workflow libraries
Orange is most useful when it is used widely across the curriculum. This ensures widespread competencies among teachers and students, and therefore lower ‘entry costs’ per exploration. Students leading CSL development can work with school libraries to organize and curate the library of data sets and workflows that are valued locally.
