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 quantitative and qualitative information COSEE-OS receives through each of its workshop evaluations is extremely important to our work. Each successive workshop evolves in response to the feedback we receive from the participants. This pilot Graduate/Faculty Workshop will serve as the first in a series of workshops held at other COSEE Centers, so feedback is important to the formative process of other workshops.

Before the workshop, we collected a wide array of information about the 17 participants, including information on their programs of study and education experience. Following the workshop, participants completed evaluations that asked them to rate a number of areas such as the effectiveness of the multimedia tools, their learning of the science and other content, and the effectiveness of concept mapping in their work. Graduate student participants in this workshop were also evaluated by a "third-party" audience of high school students who rated the presentations on the same criteria as their peers: The Big Picture, Use of Jargon, Concept Map and Take Home Message.

A key goal of this workshop was to help synergistically improve communication of complex science topics using concept mapping and web-based tools. This new pilot workshop challenged scientists and graduate students/post docs to open new lines of communication at the academic level.

Rather than let participants self select their teams, we "match make" students using Ocean & Climate Literacy principles as our framework. At the Graduate/Faculty Collaborative workshop, comments reflected that graduate students felt the tenor of the interactions with faculty were positive and collegial. More than 80% of participants felt that they had just the right amount of time with Faculty and their peers, though 25% wished they had more interaction with COSEE-OS staff.

All workshop participants reported having just the right amount of fun and exposure to new experiences. Students rated the "quality of interaction" between themselves and faculty as a 6.9 on a Likert scale of 1-7.

Quotes from Workshop Participants

"The learning experience and the interaction with the faculty and high school students was very informative and I feel more positive about interacting with the general public about my science."

"I learned an incredible amount in a short time period."