2025 FWS Data Management Workshop: Full Schedule

Welcome to the 2025 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Data Management Workshop!

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11:00am EST

Confidence By Design: How to Improve the Quality of Data Collected During Ecological Monitoring Part I

Tuesday February 11, 2025 11:00am - 12:45pm EST

Are you interested in learning how to improve the quality, reliability, and usability of your ecological data? If so, then please join us as we walk through elements of systematic planning – a quality management framework promoted by the U.S. EPA to assist scientists, managers, and practitioners in the development and achievement of established data quality performance standards. This interactive course provides participants the opportunity to engage in discussion and hands-on exercises on the concepts and applications of data quality planning, implementation, and assessment, fundamental to environmental research and monitoring activities. This half-day training session has been designed to enhance competency in both career- and entry-level professionals on the practical applications of quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) best practices. Support to this training was funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

Describe the Purpose of Systematic Planning
Describe the Value of a Data Management Plan
Develop Meaningful Goals and “SMART” Project Objectives
Define Performance/Acceptance Criteria for Indicators of Data Quality (i.e., data quality indicators)
Describe the Distinction Between Implementation and Effectiveness Monitoring
Describe Why it’s Important to Incorporate “Independent” Oversight
Describe Quality Control Procedures Used During Monitoring
Describe Why it’s Important to Conduct Data Quality Review
Describe the Process Involved in Verifying and Validating Project Data
Describe the Purpose of Certifying Your Data

Speakers

Louis Blume

EPA

Molly Middlebrook

GDIT

Tuesday February 11, 2025 11:00am - 12:45pm EST

Training Session

11:00am EST

Dynamic Reporting with Quarto

Tuesday February 11, 2025 11:00am - 12:45pm EST

The intent of this course is to provide an introduction to Quarto for intermediate to advanced R users seeking to develop automated reports. We will cover the basics of Quarto, followed by a walkthrough of the three primary components of a Quarto file: the YAML metadata, text, and code blocks. After discussing each component, we will offer brief exercises that allow participants to explore how these components can customize documents. Our goal is for participants to leave with foundational skills necessary to create a Quarto report.

Learning Objectives

Introduce Quarto and its applications.
Describe the three components of a Quarto file: YAML metadata, text, and code blocks.
Provide opportunities for hands-on exploration of Quarto components through in-class exercises.

Prerequisites:

Intermediate knowledge of R
Our course will require having R and R Studio installed on computers.

Speakers

Jonah Withers

Fisheries and Ecological Services Data Manager, USFWS

McCrea Cobb

Supervisory Biometrician, Refuges, USFWS

Jacob Cochran

Fish Biologist, USFWS

Jason Ross

IT Specialist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Tuesday February 11, 2025 11:00am - 12:45pm EST

Training Session

2:00pm EST

Confidence By Design: How to Improve the Quality of Data Collected During Ecological Monitoring Part II

Tuesday February 11, 2025 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST

Speakers

Louis Blume

EPA

Molly Middlebrook

GDIT

Tuesday February 11, 2025 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST

Training Session

2:00pm EST

Unlocking Research Visibility: ORCIDs and DOIs

Tuesday February 11, 2025 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST

Join us to explore how Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and Open Researcher and Contributor IDs (ORCIDs) can increase the visibility of your research.  We will cover the basics of obtaining and managing these identifiers, focusing on their benefits for tracking research outputs and improving data sharing.

Audience: Service employees not familiar with scholarly publishing and public access requirements in the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Objective: Service employees will better understand permanent identifiers for tracking research outputs and improving data sharing with an overall goal of increased open science practices.

Skills Learned: Service employees will have a scholarly profile and be able to mint DOI’s for research products

Materials/Resources:
Computer, come with one research product: a dataset, a publication, etc.

Speakers

Megan Burdi

National Librarian, USFWS, NCTC

Megan Burdi is the National Librarian for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the National Conservation Training Center. She has a passion for making information more accessible and discoverable through digital stewardship and research services. In her role, she finds innovative... Read More →

Tuesday February 11, 2025 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST

Training Session