HOW TO TEACH OCEANOGRAPHY WHEN YOU'RE NOWHERE NEAR THE OCEAN: THE APPLICATION OF GIS

The Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Furman University offers a course in Introductory Oceanography designed to develop a fundamental understanding of the principles and processes governing the oceans. The course is always filled to capacity (~25 students per class), mostly with non-science majors needing to satisfy their general education requirements in science. In many instances, the course is one of two science courses the students will be exposed to during their undergraduate college career. Therefore, it is our responsibility to develop the students' scientific literacy and general environmental awareness, so they can be more cognizant of scientific issues, better evaluate scientific material, and be able to make informed decisions regarding scientific policy.

One problem the class experiences is the lengthy distance of our campus from the coastal ocean (approximately 4 to 5 hours driving time), so field trips to the ocean are difficult for the class and usually given only on a voluntary basis. Consequently, laboratory periods are used to provide the engaged learning experience that usually accompany field trips. This makes the development of labs that capture the interest and engage the students critical. Incorporating geographic information system (GIS) technology into the laboratory curriculum helps alleviate some of these problems by giving the students a greater capability to visualize, analyze and manipulate oceanographic data sets. Most of our students have difficulty solving problems when they have to think in multiple dimensions, especially when they are not physically in the field to experience and observe these complicated phenomena. GIS provides a platform to integrate a wide array of spatial and temporal data, and gives the students the ability to visualize and process information that would otherwise be difficult for them to comprehend.

With limited experience, I was able to develop a GIS laboratory through a method of trial and error. All data used in the lab were collected from data sources accessible to the public over the internet. The lab developed will be presented here and made available to the public over the web.