Unit 3: Oceans As Habitat: Sustaining Life in the Ocean
MICHELLE KINZEL, Southwestern College; Astrid Schnetzer, North Carolina State University; Cara Thompson, Arizona State University at the West Campus
Students will be able to identify the functional roles that organisms play in ocean ecosystems. How do human-induced changes in ocean conditions affect biodiversity, and thereby the health and resilience of a coral ...

Unit 1: Energy, Space, and Earth's Effective Temperature
Allison Dunn, Worcester State University; Phil Resor, Wesleyan University; Bob Mackay, Clark College
This unit is designed to engage students by introducing them to patterns in recent climate and investigating possible reasons for recent changes. Students work in small groups to plot and analyze real-world ...

Unit 4: Earth's radiation balance - a map and graph-based jigsaw
Phil Resor, Wesleyan University; Bob Mackay, Clark College; Allison Dunn, Worcester State University
In this two-day activity spanning Units 4 and 5, students analyze spatial variation in climate through a map-based jigsaw exploration of NASA's Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy Systems (CERES) Energy ...

Unit 5: Balancing the Radiation Budget: A Jigsaw Exploration of the Global Climate System (Part 2)
Phil Resor, Wesleyan University; Bob Mackay, Clark College; Allison Dunn, Worcester State University
In this two-day activity spanning Units 4 and 5, students analyze spatial variation in climate through a map-based jigsaw exploration of NASA's Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy Systems (CERES) Energy ...

Unit 5: Analyzing Complexity
deborah gross, Carleton College; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; Karl Kreutz, University of Maine
This unit has students build on a system diagram, to include new knowledge about quantitative values and relationships. They will also write about and discuss what they know about their systems, the questions that ...

Unit 1: Introduction to Systems Thinking – What is a System?
Karl Kreutz, University of Maine; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; deborah gross, Carleton College
This unit introduces systems and systems thinking. The unit is easily adaptable to any course and includes an introduction of terminology, motivation for using systems thinking, and practice reading, as well as ...

Unit 2: Picturing Complexity
deborah gross, Carleton College; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; Karl Kreutz, University of Maine
This unit includes an opportunity for students to move from definitions into reading and creating a diagram of a complex system relevant to their course, and then to exploring the connections between the components ...

Unit 3: Modeling a System
Karl Kreutz, University of Maine; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; deborah gross, Carleton College
This unit introduces systems modeling, which allows students to quantify and manipulate system components to create system responses. Students use a simple systems model of a bathtub to explore the effect of flow ...

Unit 4: Feedbacks in a System
Karl Kreutz, University of Maine; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; deborah gross, Carleton College
Feedbacks are a critical part of many systems. In this unit, students use a systems model to explore the effect of positive (reinforcing) and negative (balancing) feedbacks on system behavior. Model results are ...

Exploring Primary Productivity
Catherine Hill, Arizona Western College
Interacting with Data: Using interactive on-line graphs and datasets created by the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) from data collected from six oceanic arrays using hundreds of instruments, students can ...