MOOCs

Monitoring the Oceans from Space MOOC

As your self-appointed education officer and fellow perpetual student, it is my duty to inform you of an upcoming MOOC on the Futurelearn platform, entitled “Monitoring the Oceans from Space“. In the five weeks of the course, which starts on 24 October, you will learn about using satellite data to monitor the health of the oceans. You will also learn how to access some of the ocean monitoring data that is collected every day about weather phenomena, icebergs, sea levels, ocean temperature, and more. If you’re into creating your own visualisations or crunching numbers yourself, this should appeal.

The course is presented by EUMETSAT and was developed by Imperative Space in partnership with Plymouth Marine Laboratory, the National Oceanography Centre (Southampton), CLS France and NASA JPL.

Read more about the MOOC here, and register here.

Here’s a trailer:

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8hKomGzZ68&w=540″]

Regular service on this blog should resume in the forseeable future; it’s been a heck of a year, so forgive us!

Sharks! MOOC videos (part II)

Here is a selection of the videos for weeks three and four of the recent Sharks! MOOC hosted on edX. You can find weeks one and two here. All the videos are available on youtube if you’re really interested – you can check out the channel containing all this year’s videos, or a giant playlist containing all the videos from the 2015 iteration of the course.

Week 3: Thinking like a Shark – Brains and Behavior

Introduction – thinking like a shark

General organisation of the nervous system

Brain regions overview

Lateral line system and Ampullae of Lorenzini

Electric snouts

Group hunting – broadnose sevengill sharks – an interview with Dave Ebert on research he did decades ago on the sevengill cowsharks of Millers Point

Week 4: Sharks in the World – Human Interactions, Ecology, and Conservation

Introduction – sharks in the world

What sharks eat

Food webs

What eats sharks?

Deep water communities

Shark struck

The problem with shark nets

Why are aquariums important?

Sharks! MOOC videos (part I)

I completed the edX-hosted Sharks! MOOC, presented by Cornell University and the University of Queensland, and it was excellent. The content was clear and for me, who stupidly quit high school biology at the age of 14 for the sake of a more classical (less useful) education, filled in a large number of gaps in my understanding of sharks and rays.

The course format was a mix of video lectures and interviews, notes, diagrams and multiple choice questions for grading purposes. The videos are available on youtube – you can check out the channel containing all this year’s videos, or a giant playlist containing all the videos from the 2015 iteration of the course.

I’m going to link to some of the most interesting videos below, so you can get a taster of what the course was like. Please sign up next time it gets offered, if you didn’t do so this time!

Broadnose sevengill cowshark at Shark Alley

Week 1: The Big Shark Picture – Biodiversity and Evolution

Intro – the big shark picture

Shark tracking

Light, depth and landforms

A walk through deep time

Bear Gulch – a golden age of sharks

Megatooths of Maryland

Week 2: Miracles of Evolution – Functional Morphology and Physiology

Introduction – miracles of evolution

Blue shark vs white shark

Pursue or ambush?

Manta ray feeding and migration

Shark vs mammal circulation

Breathing water

Countercurrent gas exchange

Osmoregulation in the bull shark

Greenland sharks

Reproduction in the sand tiger (ragged tooth) shark

Modes of reproduction

Week 3 (shark brains and behaviour) and 4 (sharks in the world) videos will follow in a separate post.

Article: National Geographic on great white sharks

The July 2016 issue of National Geographic contains an article entitled “Why Great White Sharks are Still a Mystery to Us“, and luckily for those of us who don’t have approximately $100 to drop on a magazine (I exaggerate, and it’s probably worth it), it’s available online as well. It’s an excellent explanation for why and how technology is being used to study these remarkable creatures.

The great white shark is the ocean’s iconic fish, yet we know little about it—and much of what we think we know simply isn’t true. White sharks aren’t merciless hunters (if anything, attacks are cautious), they aren’t always loners, and they may be smarter than experts have thought. Even the 1916 Jersey Shore attacks famously mentioned in Jaws may have been perpetrated by a bull shark, not a great white.

We don’t know for sure how long they live, how many months they gestate, when they reach maturity. No one has seen great whites mate or give birth. We don’t really know how many there are or where, exactly, they spend most of their lives. Imagine that a land animal the size of a pickup truck hunted along the coasts of California, South Africa, and Australia. Scientists would know every detail of its mating habits, migrations, and behavior after observing it in zoos, research facilities, perhaps even circuses. But the rules are different underwater. Great whites appear and disappear at will, making it nearly impossible to follow them in deep water. They refuse to live behind glass—in captivity some have starved themselves or slammed their heads against walls.

The photographs are by Brian Skerry. It’s worth checking out. Read the article here, or pick up a copy of the magazine when you see it on the shelves.

And for the inveterate shark fans and those who want to pursue some further education, it’s not too late to sign up for the Shark MOOC on edX that started on 28 June. Click here to join in.

A new ocean MOOC starting on Monday!

Online learning with SDI — Online learning

This one snuck up on me. Starting on Monday 25 April (yes, this Monday), a massive open online course (MOOC – remember those?) about science-based solutions to challenges facing the world’s oceans becomes available to the curious. It’s a collaboration between Kiel University in Germany, its GEOMAR Hemholtz Centre for Ocean Research and “cluster of excellence” (I don’t know!) The Future Ocean, and the International Ocean Institute.

The course syllabus is comprehensive and spans 10 weeks of online study. You will cover topics from oceanography, marine biology, and geology. The aspects of the course related to humans include ocean governance, human-ocean interactions, changes happening along our coastline, and – most importantly – solutions from marine spatial planning to ecosystem management.

It looks very comprehensive and unmissable if you’re a marine freak. Go to oceanmooc.org to learn more and sign up. For your own privacy, protection and future access (and this applies to every website that offers you the option, not just this one) don’t sign in with your facebook, linkedin or other credentials. Make a new account using your email address, and create a new password.

Get to it.

Weekend dive plans

Marine ecosystems MOOC from UCT

Week 3: Thinking like a Shark – Brains and Behavior

Week 4: Sharks in the World – Human Interactions, Ecology, and Conservation

Week 1: The Big Shark Picture – Biodiversity and Evolution

Week 2: Miracles of Evolution – Functional Morphology and Physiology