Marine curriculum: A pragmatic learning technique

This paper is an attempt to demonstrate how a specific teaching strategy stressing skill development as a powerful unifying force may be employed, especially when a multidisciplinary marine curriculum, heterogenous student population, and varying professional goals collide in the same classroom and at the same time in the midst of so-called "information exposion" blast! As a case in point, Applied Oceanography (AO), a highly multidisciplinary and an intermediate course at Community College of Rhode Island between 1976- \´81 is assessed as a skill-oriented tool for 250 students; mostly middle-age and working. AO\´s contents included these contemporary and fairly technical topics: offshore petroleum, energy technologies, ocean mining, fisheries, sea-farming, conservation and management of marine resources, and pollution. The student population varied in terms of their economic status, age, and educational preparation. In terms of profession, studentbody comprised doctors, nurses, engineers, technicians, environmentalists, fishermen, retired navymen, businessmen including one company president to name a few. As a teaching strategy, AO emphasized development of these skills: reading, writing, and speech using the vast reservoir of basic and contemporary knowledge of the ocean business. The aforementioned skills were indirectly incorporated in the preparation, and subsequent oral presentation of each student\´s assigned research project before the class. Also, necessary incentives were offered to students for group communication throughout the course duration. AO had adopted a lecture/seminar style format. The student evaluation of AO indicated rating of 8 on a 1 to 10 scale. More important, in terms of productivity, at present seven volumes of selected research projects is underway for an intended publication in the near furture. It is concluded that a skill-oriented approach is more effective as a learning process than a conventional lecture format; especially in the c- - omplex domain of ocean business.