Thompson Receives Fellowship to Make Big Data More Accessible

Thompson Receives Fellowship to Make Big Data More Accessible

Laura Thompson
Laura Thompson

This week Nebraska Extension Educator and CropWatch Contributor Laura Thompson was one of four awarded national eXtension Fellowships. Thompson is a cropping systems and agriculture technologies extension educator and co-coordinator with Extension Educator Keith Glewen of the Nebraska On-Farm Research Network.

Through the fellowship — “Data Visualization in Publications, Live Presentations and Recorded Data Videos” — Thompson will be pursuing means to make Big Data meaningful to Extension's many audiences.

Big Data has expanded exponentially one's ability to generate and collect data in all sectors of Cooperative Extension. Data visualization is an important communications tool for distilling and presenting data so audiences can interpret it, remember it, and apply it to change behavior.

Thompson will be examining data visualization and presentation techniques and develop recommendations and guidelines for their use in Extension.

In Nebraska Extension Thompson works with precision agriculture programs and Project Sense as well as the on-farm research program. See some of her CropWatch contributions here.

Online Master of Science in Agronomy

With a focus on industry applications and research, the online program is designed with maximum flexibility for today's working professionals.

A field of corn.