The challenge
Students must graph, analyze, and creatively interpret Urban Critical Zone data for a public audience. The goal is to present a compelling data-based story or message that accurately describes a finding from Critical Zone research.
Students may create a graphic, story, play, song, or other product—their imagination is the limit! Just make sure projects accurately summarize and portray the trends from the data.
Registration
All participants are required to have an adult adviser who registers them. Advisors can be parents, guardians, teachers, or other mentors. We will contact the team advisor with a confirmation email and any future updates. If you are registering an entire class, you only need to submit one registration form; we will collect individual student information at a later date.
Registration Deadline: Registration for the Urban Critical Zone Data Jam Competition must be completed by Friday, April 4, 2025. Registration is non-binding, but it helps us estimate the number of judges we will need.
To register, fill out the registration form. Only one registration form is necessary per advisor - so if you are registering one student, student group, or even multiple whole classes you only need to fill out one registration form.
You will receive a confirmation by email. If you have not received a confirmation within 24 hours of submitting your registration, please email us at hooda@caryinstitute.org.
All students participating in the competition must have their parents/guardians complete the consent form by May 1, 2025. Team projects with missing consent forms cannot be judged.
Data
This video will help students understand the critical steps they will need to take in their quest to answer scientific questions about their data set.
We have provided three datasets collected by Urban Critical Zone science and research teams. Our datasets are available as Google Sheets through the Datasets page. If you want a fun, easy way to try graphing and exploring data, we recommend Concord Consortium’s Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP). The CODAP website offers How-to guides for maximizing use of the platform. We have also provided a Getting Started with CODAP Handbook, which covers the basics.
Submission/Judging
Projects are both submitted and judged online.
Judging rubric
Teams
Students can work on projects on their own or in groups as small as two students or as large as a whole class. Prizes are awarded for a project, so winnings must be split between team members.
Prizes
Prizes will be awarded separately for middle and high school students. Each age group will include:
- First prize - $400
- Second prize - $200
- Honorable Mention (up to 3 per age group) - $50
Parts of the Project
Each submission to the Urban Critical Zone Data Jam Competition will include two parts – a scientific report and an interpretive creative component.
- Report. Each team must submit a report that summarizes their project for judges and others to review. The report is worth 55% of the total project score. If submitting projects to be judged as part of the UCZ Data Jam competition, the report should be completed using the Urban Critical Zone DJ Report Form.
- Interpretive Creative Component. Communicate your findings! The creative piece should clearly explain the data to someone without the scientific knowledge to interpret datasets or graphs on their own. Skits, videos, songs, puppet shows, poems, photographs, exhibits, sculptures, interactive displays and more are encouraged. The projects will be judged online, so live performances must be submitted as electronic audio or a YouTube video. Recordings must be 5 minutes or less. The creative project is worth 45% of the total project score. Junior Data Jam: Creative component is worth 60% of total project score.
We recommend reading the Data Jam Guidebook for a scoring rubric and detailed information about what the Report and the Creative Component entail.
This video was created for our sister Data Jam–The Hudson Data Jam–but still provides useful and important considerations for students who are beginning the process of Data Jamming!