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.
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.
COSEE OCEAN co-PI Dr. Stephan Uozzo of the New York Hall of Science gave this presentation to the COSEE OCEAN Team, as an introduction to network science.
Academic scientists have a number of avenues through which they can participate in education and outreach (E/O) programs to address the mandate for broader impacts. During this presentation, the authors presented one scientist’s perspective on the advantages and limitations of different modes of E/O and included specific examples from the past three years of working with COSEE-Ocean Systems.
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.
Discover a powerful visual tool to help your students and audiences– no matter where they live - improve their understanding of ocean and climate interactions. COSEE-OS has developed a suite of interactive multimedia tools that illustrate clear connections among and within the ocean, earth, and solar systems.
Ocean Inquiry Project (OIP), a non-profit organization in Puget Sound, WA, delivers inquiry-style marine science education using a hands-on curriculum while gathering research-quality data in Puget Sound for scientific partners. A collaboration between COSEE Ocean Learning Communities and OIP is bringing together ocean researchers, volunteers from environmental organizations, informal educators, and local youth groups for day-long field-research learning experiences on Puget Sound. These field experiences strive to give the diverse participant groups a better appreciation for the process of science, how oceanographic data is collected, and an increased understanding of the Puget Sound ecosystem and the role humans play in the ecosystem’s health
This collaboration has benefited the non-scientists and scientists alike. In this presentation, we will discuss our approach, and provide examples of the successes and challenges encountered during this collaboration.
Graduate students often enter marine sciences with disparate backgrounds and experiences. Understanding biological oceanography, because of multiple interactions among organisms and with the environment, can be daunting to new graduate students. We use concept mapping as a tool to allow students to better integrate information and turn it into knowledge by explicitly visualizing ideas.
Since 2005, COSEE-OS has been creating & testing models of collaboration, particularly with respect to reaching rural and inland audiences, engaging ocean researchers, and creating transferable activities for classroom education. In this presentation, we:
Summarize strides made by COSEE-OS in reaching rural and inland audiences.
Describe how COSEE-OS has increased the capacity of scientists to efficiently translate their research into compelling and relevant content for various audiences by helping them deconstruct knowledge into concepts for construction of concept maps.
Conduct two transferable activities, one from our recent publication "Teaching Physical Concepts in Oceanography: An Inquiry Based Approach" entitled "Effects of Temperature & Salinity on Density & Stratification" and one based on two Science Daily articles illustrating transferability between ocean science content and standard physical science and terrestrial ecological concepts.
Error is a given when trying to communicate the relationships among complicated science concepts. Communication research has identified at least 11 sources of error that the scientist needs to minimize: error due to the sender, encoding, the message, the channel of communication, the receiver, decoding, the audience, the physical environment, the social environment, the political and economic environment, and/or time.
COSEE-OS has developed a professional development model for scientists and online tools to minimize these eleven sources of error (not eliminate them because that is not an achievable goal). Particular attention is paid to minimizing the encoding and decoding sources of error through the use of online concept mapping tools which graphically communicate the scientist's logic of how they think, non-linearly, about the relationships among their various concepts of interest.
Ocean observing systems (OOS) provide a wealth of real-time data that can be put to use in classrooms and informal learning centers. This presents an exciting opportunity to connect students and the public to real-world science. Additionally, when students analyze real-time data in structured learning environments, it can help them improve their inquiry skills while exposing them to relevant ocean science topics to increase their level of ocean knowledge. However, building tools to help students, teachers and the public access and understand real-time data effectively presents many logistical and design challenges.
To address these challenges, a collaborative group of scientists, classroom and informal educators, education researchers, and data translators have worked together to develop several novel approaches to bring real-time OOS data to classroom and public audiences. This team was brought together by the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence Networked Ocean World (COSEE NOW), a virtual community of scientists and educators seeking to foster collaborations that will engage participants in the development of new products that promote the Ocean Literacy essential concepts.
