Framing UCSB’s oceanography course in terms of the Kyoto Conference or “Earth Summit” metaphor has increased student interest, and more closely supports the course goals of increasing learner awareness of the science process and how science claims can be critically analyzed. At the beginning of the course, learners join a group that will relate each of the course themes to their Earth Summit country and then develop a perspective that supports pertinent environmental issues. The course themes are 1) ocean basins and plate tectonics, 2) atmosphere/ocean/ climate, 3) waves and beaches, and 4) world fisheries. During the plate tectonics theme, learners use the “Our Dynamic Planet” CDROM to acquire data and data representations for a position paper that puts the plate tectonics of their country into a global plate tectonics model. During the atmosphere/ocean/climate theme, learners choose from the most relevant of 12 mini-studies that use various kinds of online earth data, which might include winds, barometric pressure, ocean composition, sst, radiation, etc. Topics include El-Nino, monsoon, climate, and others. The WorldWatcher CD and online data browsers are used.

Themes 1, 2, and 4 each require a group presentation in lab section and an individually written position paper. In addition, there are weekly online homeworks, thought questions, and mini-quizzes randomly generated from a database. The weekly assignments, except for the thought questions, are graded automatically.

Student feedback in anonymous reviews at the end of the course were very positive. During the course, student engagement in the subject matter was high. New course software supporting online writing, graphics editing and linking, and bulletin board/chat was also introduced. In spite of initial software bugs, students responded positively to the “coolness factor.” The grade distribution tended to be bimodal, with a peak at extremely high grades and another at the B level.

See http://oceanography.geol.ucsb.edu/ for more detailed information.