Interview with Pat Kremer
This past March, Pat Kremer, Research Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Connecticut, went on a four-week cruise to the Southern Ocean off the Antarctic Peninsula. Before the trip, Pat, a graduate of COSEE-NE’s Telling Your Story workshop, made presentations at six local schools (three middle schools and three high schools) to prepare students to be involved in a ``virtual cruise.’’ During the actual research cruise, these students were able to follow along on the cruise website and ask questions via email contact with the research ship. Recently we asked Pat how it all went.
What was your recent research cruise about?
We spent four weeks in the Southern Ocean west of the Antarctic Peninsula studying salps, which are closely related to sea squirts, a common fouling organism on pilings and docks. There’s not much information on salp ecology in the Southern Ocean, yet they can occur in very high abundance and overlap in distribution with krill, which also eat phytoplankton.
How did you prepare for communicating with the students?
In the three weeks before we left Connecticut, one of my graduate students and I visited six schools and talked with both middle school and high school science classes about our study. That made a personal connection, which hopefully made the students more interested in what we were actually doing at sea. We spoke with a total of about 250 students.
How did you first connect with the teachers?
We sent emails to 12 local schools and 6 responded. Unfortunately the teachers from some of the schools with the fewest resources for curriculum enrichment did not respond.
Have you done classroom visiting before?
When my children were young I would routinely visit their classes, especially if I had been on a cruise where we had done something "cool" like SCUBA diving or using manned submersibles. That experience, plus being a parent, has given me the confidence that I know how to communicate on the appropriate level for my audience.
Were you planning on visiting the classrooms this year before you took the Telling Your Story workshop, or did the workshop inspire you?
A bit of both. We already had the idea, but had not yet contacted the teachers.
Did you find what you learned in the workshop helpful? Did you use any of the models or techniques you learned?
We made sure we talked in detail with the teachers beforehand, as they suggested in Telling Your Story, so we were all on the same page with the same expectations for our visit. I made sure I gave the teachers a chance to have input into what I was going to say. Based on the subjects the various teachers had for their classes, I "spun" the presentation a bit differently.
How did the teachers incorporate your presentation and cruise into their curriculum?
Mostly the students asked us questions during the cruise via email directly. In addition various teachers did a range of interesting things. In one high school class the students each selected a different scientist or crew member to follow and learn more about via the website and email correspondence. A class of seventh graders at a local private school were learning about animals, so the teacher incorporated our research directly, teaching about the organisms we were collecting. An 8th grade was studying physical science, and on any cruise there is a lot to learn about how machines work and the importance of electronics. Another group did term papers, focused on aspects of the ecology of the Antarctic region. The nice thing about oceanography is we go in so many different directions – chemistry, geology, biology – oceanography is multi-disciplinary.
Was the email component a success?
The wonderful thing for the kids is to get a personal connection with the scientists while the cruise is going on. The email dialog is necessary for this. This sort of relationship is much different from simply looking at a website. The important thing is for real kids to ask real questions to real scientists. They want to know things like, what do we eat on board? Do we catch fish and eat them? What is a regular day at sea like? I wanted to excite the students about marine science, so direct communication is important. For kids to ask questions and get an answer back gives them a feeling of connectedness with the cruise.
Your cruise had a Dive and Discover component. How does that work?
Dive and Discover is a WHOI program that was begun with research geologists. In fact, our cruise was the first that did not involve underwater geology as its research topic. The Dive and Discover website has daily updates, photos and videos, which get students involved. We had a full-time outreach person on board, Kate Madin, and she was responsible for all the daily updates to the website.
You have an idea for a variation on this model.
I think there could be a centralized group that helps to make the connection between a whole range of teachers and sea-going researchers. This central group would provide the website interface, taking information in a standard format from scientists at sea and posting it on the website. Email correspondence could be directly between the scientists and the teachers and students. Right now institutions are doing this kind of thing one by one by one, and each has to learn independently from the ground up. I think this sort of framework would work well for a lot of ocean-going oceanographers and teachers who wish to feature research at sea in their curriculum. PI’s would then only be responsible for making their research interesting and understandable for their audience.
What’s the advantage to this model?
This activity would not need to take a lot of resources and/or personnel. A fairly standard web format can go a long way as long as the content is sufficiently different. For example, on last year’s cruise to the Southern Ocean we operated by the seat of our pants, with something we did not pull together until shortly before the cruise. We made a simple website, mostly for students at our home institutions, professional colleagues, friends and family. We emailed text from sea and included a couple of pictures each day. We had someone back at UConn post what we sent on a website in a predetermined format. It was a surprisingly effective communication tool, especially when combined with email correspondence for questions and answers.
How would schools use this?
There is no reason why schools from a broad geographic area could not feel included in a cruise with some pre-cruise communication and the opportunity to have email dialog with the scientists during the cruise. This idea scales up very nicely, even nationally. Start with six schools and get to one hundred easily. It would be important, however, to have some way of limiting the numbers of questions and make sure scientists weren’t overwhelmed by outreach email. We found it useful on our cruises to have a single person who was the designated contact for outreach communication, writing the daily logs and serving as the person who received all the questions. This person would then ask the scientific party to help answer questions as appropriate.
How do you see teachers integrating this into their classrooms?
If teachers like the virtual cruise they could work it into their curriculum on an annual basis, organizing it so scientists on cruises could plug in. I'm not sure this can or should ever be hard wired into the school's curriculum since one school and teacher is sufficiently different from another. It would be possible, however, to build up a "resource center" with information about how various teachers have used the virtual cruise in their various classrooms.
