Four COSEE Centers - Ocean Systems, West, Networked Ocean World, and California - held concept mapping collaborative workshops to help scientists mentor graduate students to improve their teaching and research. Formative and summative evaluation results indicate that the workshops promoted more peer to peer interactions between faculty and graduate students and more familiarity with Ocean Literacy and Climate Literacy principles.
Scientific Process in Practice was a 2 hour long, weekly seminar designed to complement a field course for incoming oceanography majors (sophomores and juniors). Through hands-on activities, this seminar aimed to help students succeed in the field and later science courses.
The 2008 North Atlantic Bloom Experiment (NAB08) was a collaborative effort to observe an entire phytoplankton spring bloom. To broadly disseminate results and contribute to the public’s understanding of ocean science, NAB08 participants collaborated with COSEE-OS to present a series of five webinars describing the motivations and findings of this multidisciplinary experiment.
COSEE-OS External Evaluator Dr. Ted Repa, representing four COSEE Centers (California, NOW, Ocean Systems and West), shared end-of-workshop evaluations from the Faculty/Graduate Student Collaborative workshop series conducted by these Centers in 2010 and 2011 at the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting.
After a successful launch in June of 2011, the Aquarius/SAC-D satellite has begun collecting global salinity data - but it is not without challenges. Learn from NASA scientists what it took to design, develop, and test the Aquarius satellite and how this leads to the collection of accurate global data in this COSEE-OS hosted webinar series.
COSEE-OS has partnered with the Institute for Broadening Participation (IBP) in a joint effort to increase diversity in the ocean sciences. IBP is a non-profit organization created to design and implement strategies to increase access to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education and careers for diverse underrepresented groups. IBP's mission is to make education and careers in science more accessible to students - particularly to members of underrepresented groups, support faculty and administrators as they work to include students from a variety of backgrounds in their programs, and foster an on-going exchange of ideas and resources between individuals and institutions who are working to navigate their future in the STEM fields.
Graduate students in the sciences who both teach and conduct research show greater improvement in their research skills than do those who focus exclusively on laboratory work, says a report to be published in the August 19 issue of Science.
Edward Maibach, M.P.H., Ph.D. and Director of the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) lists five guiding principles in educating the public about the state of our oceans.
Intended for anyone who communicates about climate change, the guide’s purpose is to assist communicators in reaching two key audiences - the general public and decision makers from government and business - more effectively.
In many educator professional development workshops, scientists present content in a slideshow-type format and field questions afterwards. Drawbacks of this approach include: inability to begin the lecture with content that is responsive to audience needs; lack of flexible access to specific material within the linear presentation; and “Q&A” sessions are not easily scalable to broader audiences. Often this type of traditional interaction provides little direct benefit to the scientists.
The Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence - Ocean Systems (COSEE-OS) applies the technique of concept mapping with demonstrated effectiveness in helping scientists and educators “get on the same page” (deCharon et al., 2009). A key aspect is scientist professional development geared towards improving face-to-face and online communication with non-scientists. COSEE-OS promotes scientist-educator collaboration, tests the application of scientist-educator maps in new contexts through webinars, and is piloting the expansion of maps as long-lived resources for the broader community.
In response to interest from graduate students and research faculty, COSEE-OS has adapted its “scientist-educator collaborative” workshop model to focus on graduate student professional development, and on opening new lines of communication between faculty and graduate students.
In the past year, COSEE-OS has run a series of model workshops that bring together teams of researchers and educators in order to synergistically improve communication of complex science topics using concept mapping and web-based tools. On January 29, 2010, at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center, a new pilot workshop was launched that challenged scientists and graduate students (as well as a few postdoctoral researchers) to open new lines of communication at the academic level.
Tested in University of Maine semester courses and summer workshops, this supplement to Oceanography magazine focuses on educational approaches to help engage students in learning and offers a collection of hands-on/minds-on activities for teaching physical concepts that are fundamental in oceanography.
This flash-based application allows users to explore concepts and their relationships through a variety of assets - videos, images, news articles, and teaching resources - within a profile that gives breadth and depth to the learning experience. The Ocean Climate Interactive, when used in conjuction with our Concept Map Builder, constitutes part of the COSEE-OS suite of ocean-climate multimedia known as the Concept Linked Integrated Media Builder.
Find hundreds of related links to continue your career exploration - explore over fifty ocean-related careers, find a college, university or training center that specializes in ocean-related education, find professional societies that can provide career guidance and scholarships, and find internships and jobs.
Together educators and ocean scientists have developed and teach a university course entitled Communicating Ocean Sciences that is now being taught in several institutions of higher education nationwide. The course is designed for undergraduate and graduate science students interested in improving their ability to communicate about complex science concepts. This paper focuses on the content, outcomes, and potential of the Communicating Ocean Sciences course.
This interactive flash animation allows students to compare the sizes of the smallest organisms we know of on our planet. Starting with the head of a pin at 2 millimeters in diameter, students can use this animation to compare the relative sizes of cells and organisms small enough to sit on a pinhead. Nearly invisible without magnification, dust mites dwarf pollen grains and human cells. In turn, bacteria and viruses are even smaller.
The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) may pale against El Nino's press, but this climate pattern can kick up a commotion all over the Northern Hemisphere. Lately, scientists have been discovering why. This four-part story describes the NAO, how it "does its thing," how data are "hunted and gathered," and NAO forecasting efforts.
The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a seesaw in atmospheric pressure between the subtropical high-pressure system over the Azores Islands and the subpolar low-pressure system over Iceland. Using this interactive flash, users can click on any of the highlighted years featured in the NAO index timeline to learn how the NOA may have affected history.
This lesson explores the relationship between density and ocean currents. Deep ocean currents are caused by differences in water temperature and salinity (density). In this experiment, the students will hypothesize the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to help explain the role that temperature plays in deep ocean currents.
The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a seesaw in atmospheric pressure between the subtropical high-pressure system over the Azores Islands and the subpolar low-pressure system over Iceland. Users can learn more about the POSITIVE and NEGATIVE phases of the NAO and how it affects the climate of the North Atlantic region by clicking on the LOW and HIGH icons.
Dr. Martin Visbeck's online slide show about the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is intended for older high school or undergraduate audiences. It gives background on the NAO, its impacts (temperature, precipitation, storminess, economics), its effects on the North Atlantic Ocean, the stratosphere, and global warming.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant # NSF OCE-0707385. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.
COSEE-Ocean Systems Central Office School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine Darling Marine Center 193 Clark's Cove Road Walpole, ME 04573
Phone: (207) 563-8176 E-mail: cosee-os
