NF-POGO Centre of Excellence Year 2 Report

incorporate more laboratory and/or field skills into each module. The year 1 Scholarsthought this an excellent approach.Scholars were very happy with the addition of new modules and the increasedefforts to get them into the laboratory for more hands-on training.4. Related to #3, the research projects will be of shorter duration in year 2 and will be muchmore directed by BIOS faculty. Our problem in year 1 was that many students tookseveral weeks to decide on a project. While we encouraged Scholars to talk with facultyabout their projects, many Scholars rotated through faculty several times as theyattempted to finalize a project. This was frustrating for faculty and was not a productiveuse of Scholar time/energy. For year 2, the projects will be much more directed, but thatdoes not mean we will „force‟ students to do a project if they have the backgroundnecessary to convince us they want, and can, do something else. Our goal is to minimize„slippage‟ (i.e., to get Scholars started on a reasonable project in a short period of time,rather than having them spend weeks mulling idea after idea).This was the most positive of all changes. Scholars had a much better idea of thework they were going to be involved with from an earlier stage.5. During the exit interview (Section 2.12), several Scholars told us that they had learnedthey needed a very detailed description of what they had done as part of the CofE. SomeScholars needed this for their home institution (i.e., many Scholars needed to „prove‟ thatthey had been trained as part of the CofE). Other Scholars needed a detailed document oftheir work in order to obtain academic credit (e.g., a couple of Scholars had applied tograduate programs and wanted to receive academic credit for their work at BIOS as partof their degree). Our plan for year 2 is to have instructors assign „grades‟ at the end ofeach module (we are still debating whether these will be letter grades, e.g., A, B, C, etc,or a more descriptive evaluation such as First, Second, With Distinction, etc.). We willalso give a „grade‟ for the final independent project (including the work itself, the finaloral presentation about the work, and the written report of the work).The grading system worked well. It allowed students to determine how they wereprogressing during the course of the Programme. Several students have subsequentlyasked for copies of their transcripts, which they will use as part of their applicationpackage to graduate schools.6. We made several changes to the modules:Our original plan for year 1 was to have a „core skills‟ module when the Scholars firstarrived. Our goal was to teach basic skills in writing (especially scientific writing) andoral presentations. As many of the Scholars arrived late, we decided to incorporate thepresentation skills into weekly seminars (Section 2.8 and 2.9). This worked well. Incontrast, we did not do a sufficient job of helping students improve their writing skillsuntil the final reports were due (Section 2.10). We will include a „core skills‟ modulein year 2 AND we will require that each module have at least one writing assignmentthat will be evaluated as part of the student grade.This worked well, but still needs improvement. We need to be more proactivein grading written reports and getting them back to Scholars in a timely fashion.Our plan for year 1 included a module on data management. This proved intractable,as the instructors, part of the Ocean Data team from Belgium, were not able toparticipate as originally scheduled. The team is scheduled for year 2.This was a very successful module and is scheduled as part of the year 3programme.15