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

Concept maps are designed to help teachers and their students understand connections and complex relationships. At COSEE, this tool is used to build understanding about climate and oceanography content. For research scientists, concept mapping helps them share their understanding of connections in the earth system. For graduate students, concept maps can be powerful tools for exposing and clarifying topics in their thesis work, courses that they teach or in collaborating with other researchers. For more information about concept mapping, visit this page.

The feedback from participants about concept mapping has been positive. In their post-workshop evaluations, students were asked, "Do you think the process of concept mapping helped you think through the topics you learned during this workshop?" 94% said "yes" (n=17).

Quotes from Workshop Participants

"The process of designing a concept map forces you to organise your ideas on a simple diagram and encourages you to think about topics in a different way."

"Great to use as organizational tool - you must really think through the process (as a team) to create the map."

"Concept mapping is certainly a good communication tool, and can be used as representations of different patterns of thought. This is very important in both education and communication with peers."