Strategy
Increasing the use of common practices by new or expert ocean research and application interests is a priority for the OBPS. The emphasis for training is to support those with emerging interests. This includes students, professionals working in cross-disciplinary collaborations, educators, etc. The OBPS approach is to draw upon ocean observation experts (working with educators) to formulate and provide focused courses on selected best practices.
However, issues to be addressed in OBPS training are broader than focusing on the best of the best. There is so much information, so much missed experience, so much poor technology that is not published or even known, but this information is valuable and could save time. Thus, the training includes the rationale for the best practice methodology and what alternatives is not recommended.
Implementation
The OBPS will assist by harmonizing the training content and building a suite of training courses (eg. through the IOC OceanTeacher Global Academy, POGO Summer Schools etc) in collaboration with provider experts.
There are many discussions of best practices that are not occuring in a formal training environment eg. workshops on interoperability and best practices or university courses. These and other venues, if video recorded, will be part of a training video channel on Youtube (OTGA already uses this channel). A similar effort for summer schools would provide a long term community resource. Thus the training looks for innovative solutions to being a global resource for best practice dissemination and adoption.
Within OBPS, capacity development and training is being implemented through the IOC OceanTeacher Global Academy(OTGA) operated by IODE, in collaboration with other training efforts in the ocean observing community, eg. POGO, IOCCP etc
The IODE is certified as a Learning Services Provider (ISO 29990). The training is initially planned as a series of in-person courses consistent with the OTGA Regional Training model, which will cover the use of best practices on sensors, applications, data management and other topics. Courses will be offered in response to stated community needs.
The classes benefit the individual participants and become more valuable if the participants become trainers. To that end, train-the-trainer courses are offered. The repository accepts videos for training with the longer-term goal of creating a library of remote best practice training resources that would be used in a blended training environment (personal and virtual). Video training on the use of the repository is in the planning stage. All OTGA Training videos are available on YouTube.
The current OTGA approach is to draw upon ocean observation experts working with educators. Moving beyond the traditional in-person training programs, OBPS will incorporate other community efforts such as online, multimedia-based training solutions that have been produced by ocean projects for their staff and others. The OBPS will use similar web-based approaches to multiply the reach of workshops and other events/programs such as summer schools well beyond those that have the resources to be present in person A similar effort for summer schools will provide a long-term community resource.
Forward Look
The next stage of training using OBPS content will leverage the now refined modality of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) already demonstrated by organizations such as IMOS, which has developed a MOOC focused on marine scientists for learning about ocean observing and the use of marine data . These types of courses should also be configured as education content for university training and summer schools. This work will be achieved in partnership with other training organizations like POGO and IOCCP.
Moving beyond traditional classroom and video methods, a range of new tools such as visual immersion techniques as well as the use of three-dimensional computer-aided-design (CAD) drawings is envisioned. There are also training opportunities to use hands-on sensor “models” created by 3D Printing All of these may be envisioned as some of the next steps for far-reaching training solutions.