Faculty/Graduate Student Collaborative Workshop at the DMC Workshop Theme: Ocean-Climate Connections

Held at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole, ME Friday, January 29, 2010 and Monday through Tuesday, February 1-2, 2010

	View all workshop concept maps

Concept maps are designed to help scientists and their students communicate more clearly about the connections and relationships between climate and oceanography. For scientists, concept mapping can help them share their deep understanding of connections in the earth system not only with the "next generation" in their particular science fields, but also with a wide variety of audiences both inside and outside academics. For graduate students, learning how to concept map with an experienced scientific researcher is a unique opportunity in their own scientific development to simultaneously gain both pedagogical and content knowledge. Several students have adopted concept mapping as part of their regular "communication" with their advisors and peers.

This workshop centered on five teams of science faculty and "scientists in training" (i.e., graduate students and postdoctoral researchers) in a ratio of 1 to 3, respectively. Each team collaboratively created online learning resources that align with National Science Education Standards, Climate Literacy Principles, and Ocean Literacy Principles. The teaming of these groups to create web-based ocean-climate products leverages both the scientific expertise of the faculty researchers and the technical capabilities of the graduate students. Each team created a series of concept maps consisting of the following:

• An original concept map created on paper by the faculty on day one of the workshop
• A digital concept map created in the COSEE Concept Map Builder and presented to graduate students / post-docs on day two of the workshop
• A consensus concept map created by each collaborative group using the COSEE-OS Concept Map Builder was presented to high school students on day three of the workshop

Topics were:

• How does change affect marine food webs?
• What is the role of benthic organisms in the global carbon dioxide cycle? How do they respond to change?
• How is carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere and stored for a long time in soils and sediments?
• How do computer models help scientists predict the location of right whales in the Gulf of Maine?
• How can robotic sensors help us understand climate change & the ocean carbon cycle?

Each team's concept maps are described on pages accessed from the menu at left, or click here to view and/or download all digital maps created at this workshop.