COSEE-OS and COSEE-West (as part of a collaborative grant with COSEE NOW and COSEE California) hosted a Graduate-Faculty Collaborative Workshop at the University of Southern California (USC). This workshop, the second in the series of four, focused on uniting graduate students from various schools in the California State university system with researchers in schools with doctoral programs in marine and other sciences.

Concept mapping was introduced to participants as a tool for deconstructing complex science, and a way of reaching audiences at various levels. On the first day of the workshop, faculty learned to concept map and created maps based on their own research interests that spoke to Ocean and Climate Fundamental Literacy Concepts. On day two, faculty presented their concept maps to graduate students, then worked together to fine-tune the map for presentation to a high school audience. High school sophomores from Tesseract High School (Phoneix, AZ) were on hand during the final day of the workshop to provide feedback on the graduate student group presentations.

The goal of these series of workshops is to improve communication of complex science topics using concept mapping and web-based tools. This workshop also challenged scientists and graduate students to open new lines of communication at the academic level.

Nineteen of the 20 graduate students attending felt that the FGSC workshop met their expectations, and were satisfied with the overall length (95%) and pacing (84%) of the workshop. Most graduate students felt that the workshop was very effective in helping them understand how concept mapping could be used to present ocean-climate science concepts (80%). Three-quarters of the graduate students felt that the Ocean-Climate Interactive online tool would be useful for their work or their presentations (70%), and that the Concept Map Builder would be useful for their work (70%) or their presentations (80%). They also felt that concept mapping was a helpful process in thinking through the content in the workshop (80%) and to share their ideas with scientists (60%).

Concept Maps

Humans and Estuaries Peggy Fong View: Scientist Map | Consensus Map Save: Scientist Map | Consensus Map

Microbes and the Ocean Jed Fuhrman View: Scientist Map | Consensus Map Save: Scientist Map | Consensus Map

Shark Conservation Chris Lowe View: Scientist Map | Consensus Map Save: Scientist Map | Consensus Map

Phytoplankton and Carbon Cycling Sergio Sanudo-Wilhelmy View: Scientist Map | Consensus Map Save: Scientist Map | Consensus Map

Climate Records Arahdna Tripani View: Scientist Map | Consensus Map Save: Scientist Map | Consensus Map