Randy Kochevar

Organization/Institution
About Me (Bio)


Randy Kochevar brings expertise in STEM education, instructional design, interactive media, data literacy, and science communications to his leadership of EDC’s Oceans of Data Institute (ODI). Trained as a marine biologist, he oversees a portfolio of projects that build K–16 students’ data literacy skills, foster teachers’ data literacy, and create pathways to data science and analytics careers.

Under Kochevar’s leadership, ODI has a growing portfolio of more than 15 projects, funded by corporations, foundations, and federal agencies. Many of these projects help students acquire scientific inquiry and data analysis skills from working with large, authentic science data sets. Others focus on identifying skills, knowledge, and behaviors critical in big data jobs.

A nationally known speaker on the topic of data literacy, Kochevar presented his work on big data careers at the 2019 National Academy of Sciences Roundtable on Data Science Postsecondary Education workshop “Data Science Education at Two-Year Colleges.”

Kochevar holds a PhD in Biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
Nurture Nature Center
07/01/2021

This project will use visualizations from an easily accessible tool from NOAA, Science On a Sphere, to help students develop critical thinking skills and practices required to effectively make meaning from authentic scientific data. The project will use arts-based pedagogies for observing, analyzing, and critiquing visual features of data visualizations to build an understanding of what the data reveal. The project will work with middle school science teachers to develop tools for STEM educators to use these data visualizations effectively.

Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)
07/01/2019

This project will develop an approach to support fourth grade students' data literacy with complex, large-scale, professionally collected data sets. The work will focus on analytical thinking as a subset of data literacy, specifically evaluating and interpreting data. The project will teach students about working with geoscience data, which connect to observable, familiar aspects of the natural world and align with Earth science curriculum standards.