Course overview
This innovative course is designed to introduce undergraduates and graduate students in ocean science related majors to inquiry-based instructional strategies for communicating their passion for their subject area. These strategies, combined with college students’ content knowledge and enthusiasm for sharing it, equip them to introduce ocean science to K-8 students and teachers in local schools. The course addresses three critical needs:
- helping scientists to more effectively communicate their subject;
- steering some science majors into teaching professions; and
- creating a greater awareness among scientists about the need for outreach.
Communicating Ocean Sciences can be used to fulfill requirements in both undergraduate science majors and the university-wide requirement for graduate students to have a course in teaching methods.
Communicating Ocean Sciences provides experience with exemplary instructional materials which illuminate current best practices in science teaching through eleven, 2.5-3 hour long, inquiry-based sessions. The college students are immersed in several weeks of hands-on ocean science activities designed to illustrate key elements of K–12 pedagogy. Then pairs of students select an ocean science unit (and kit) that they will teach in a local K-8 classroom where they spend the next six weeks (1-2 hours/week), working side-by-side with a teacher, exploring inquiry-based ocean science content with children. The last few sessions are spent discussing and reflecting on their experiences, and applying them to their future careers.
Communicating Ocean Sciences to Informal Audiences (COSIA) taught at UC Berkeley and five other universities provides students with experience in informal science education instructional strategies.
The Communicating Ocean Sciences courses are based on the highly successful Communicating Chemistry/Physics/Astronomy series co-developed and co-taught by the University of California’s Lawrence Hall of Science and College of Chemistry.
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