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

The graduate faculty workshop brought a group of Umaine School of Marine Sciences graduate students and post-docs together with the combined goal of learning more about concept mapping, scientific research, and presenting to different audiences. Part of this training involved learning the Ocean Climate Interactive and Concept Map Builder software developed by COSEE-OS. Many of the students had used this software before, but few had used it as a presentation tool. An interruption of power in the middle of the workshop limited the student's exposure to the concept mapping as a presentation tool.

The feedback gathered from the workshop included comments from graduate student and faculty participants. Many of these comments had specific recommendations for additions to the software's functionality, ease of use or aesthetic improvements. The new software (version 1.6), released after the workshop incorporated many of the suggestions mentioned by graduate students and other workshop participants including:

• Asset previewing: the ability to see the number and type of assets (i.e., images, videos, news, teaching resources) that are attached to a concept in both the Concept Map Builder and Ocean Climate Interactive
• Map Linking: The ability to link maps to other existing maps through concepts
• OCI previewing: A preview that displays what a map will look like when presented in the Ocean Climate Interactive
• Improved formatting of concepts (including text formatting without HTML)
• Ability to duplicate objects (concepts, lines, phrases)
• "Undo" capability

For a link to tutorials that cover the new software features, click here.

A follow up webinar for the graduate student participants will include further questions about the software, as well as a debut of the new functions to these participants. COSEE-OS continues to refine and develop these tools through user feedback, and further changes may result from further suggestions.

Quotes from Workshop Participants

"I think this tool needs more advertising. It should be promoted in all SMS and ERS classes where it can be used as a starting point in both individual and team projects. Instructors could support the use of this tool so that students can use them later on their own. I would like to see more initiatives that allow grad students to use OCI as a means of improving teaching and communication of their results to a more general audience."

"I think it will be useful in organizing my thoughts on new research directions or thinking through complex interactions as I work through a question. Making some of the resources on pull-down menus rather than having to write in html format (like font size, just click the size you want like in Word)."

"I think concept maps and the online multi-media tool is very useful for the organisation of ideas and is particularly well-suited to presenting overviews of new research ideas."