The Online Clearinghouse for Education And Networking - Oil Interdisciplinary Learning (OCEAN-OIL) project is establishing an online mechanism and resource for STEM faculty members to create, share, evaluate, improve, adapt and/or utilize a variety of resources, in many formats, to inform their instruction about the Deepwater Horizon disaster in a "teachable moment," as well as to enhance student learning about broader considerations related to the benefits, risks, and potential impacts of offshore oil production and its associated energy, environmental, social and political complexities. The OCEAN-OIL website is being seamlessly integrated into the Encyclopedia of Earth (www.eoearth.org), which is a free, peer-reviewed, searchable collection of content about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society, written by expert scholars and educators. The OCEAN-OIL project has three goals: 1) to spur activity to develop and share materials, 2) to facilitate dissemination and adoption of these materials, and 3) to promote deep thinking about the relationship between humans, their needs, and the Earth. As a collaboration between the National Council for Science and the Environment, Boston University, and Louisiana State University, the project is creating OCEAN-OIL as a comprehensive, interdisciplinary website with content that has multiple entry points for varying levels of expertise, particularly STEM faculty and undergraduate students, and whose instructional resources focus on 'big ideas' in Earth science, ocean, and climate literacy that have been generated by broad research communities. Resources being shared include high quality undergraduate pedagogic material related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico, addressing content directly related to the spill and the underlying issues that provide the larger context to the spill. A wide community of experts is engaged in developing the website. OCEAN-OIL provides online tools to increase its utility to undergraduate educators, and includes a mechanism for educator and student evaluations to provide feedback to the project on the resource's utility. The project is studying the effectiveness of using OCEAN-OIL materials in courses taught in Fall 2010 at Boston University and Louisiana State University. The evaluation is studying the quality, use, and impact of the website through usage data analytics, feedback from faculty, and data from common student assessments employed by faculty who use OCEAN-OIL materials in their courses.
This project in the Division of Undergraduate Education (Education and Human Resources Directorate) is being co-funded by the Geosciences Directorate and the Biology Directorate.
The Deepwater Horizon oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that began on April 20, 2010 is the largest marine oil spill in history. Roughly five million barrels of oil were released by the Macondo well, with roughly 4.2 million barrels pouring into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico over the next three month. This disaster is one of the most significant events in U.S. energy and environmental history, and thus represents an historic 'teachable moment.' The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE), Boston University (BU) and Louisiana State University (LSU), with support from a RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation (Award 1055222), developed an Online Clearinghouse for Education And Networking – Oil Interdisciplinary Learning (OCEAN-OIL) at www.eoearth.org/oceanoil . OCEAN-OIL is a free, open-access, peer-reviewed electronic education resource about the Deepwater Horizon disaster. OCEAN-OIL contains a curriculum resource center to share teaching materials – lesson plans, presentations, images, videos, assessment tools, modules, exercises and other resources – with other educators to enable more effective teaching. OCEAN-OIL provides a model for how tragic disasters can contribute valuable learning opportunities facilitate deeper thinking about the interconnectedness between human use of resources and the consequences for people and the environment OCEAN-OIL engages experts in science, policy, education, and assessment in the production of a virtual toolbox of curricular resources designed for teaching about the Deepwater Horizon disaster and its surrounding constellation of energy, environmental, social, and political issues. OCEAN-OIL is integrated into the Encyclopedia of Earth (www.eoearth.org), which receives some 6 million visits annually. The Encyclopedia of Earth is a free, peer-reviewed, searchable collection of content about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society, written and reviewed by expert scholars and educators. OCEAN-OIL provides educators with accurate, credible information, and pedagogically sound curricular materials. The resources on the site will encourage faculty to learn from one another how best to involve students in a range of learning activities, including research. OCEAN-OIL resources available as of October 2011 at www.EoEarth.org/oceanoil include: o All of the reports and background papers (30) from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Reports - 30 official reports & background papers o Curricular Resources - 31 various curricular resources o Articles (169+) hyper-linked, encyclopedia style o Glossary (400+) related to causes, impacts, clean-up, and prevention o Acronyms (LPG, PPM, ROV, VOC) (100+) to help decode the language of oil spill science o External links (100+) to government sites, image galleries, news sources, industry, environmental groups, education,& journal articles o Photo galleries (23) Images by renowned photojournalist Gary Braasch & others o Deepwater Horizon by the Numbers: Publication-quality graphs o Videos (305+) o Databases - Statistics, technical diagrams, maps, and other data o Books – titles and information about 33 books about the disaster Submitted by David Blockstein, Ph.D., Principal Investigator
