Upon the request of advanced graduate students at the IONTU, I designed this course to share my personal experiences and writing skills to improve IONTU graduate students' English written communication skills. Although we are all aware that scientists are expected to frequently write professional papers, many graduate students—including me in the past—struggle at writing academically. Worrying about not presenting a good enough draft to their Ph.D. advisors, many students hesitate to start a draft. Yet, without a draft, their Ph.D. advisors cannot help them to improve their work. My course is designed and has helped students generate satisfactory drafts for their Ph.D. application statements, Ph.D. perspectives, and/or drafts of their manuscripts. After taking this course, six students are now Ph.D. students in the top US and Canadian universities. In addition, two students are now NTU Ph.D. students, two are now postdoctoral researchers in marine/environmental sciences, one a lecturer at the University Sains Malaysia.      

Briefly, two textbooks are followed: "Writing science: How to write papers that get cited and proposals that get funded" by Joshua Shimel and "How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing" by Paul J. Silvia. The class starts by having students write a short script for their elevator speech. Before the pandemic, students were asked to memorize their script and deliver their research orally while riding the elevator in our building. Through the pandemic, we timed 30 seconds for students to share the highlight of their research. Next, each student is required to read and analyze two published scientific papers of their own choice: one from a specialist journal written by a good writer recognized in their field and one article from Nature and Science. Students identified the topic and the main point of the topic sentences in their selected published papers; then, students crafted their own topic sentences derived from their bulleted outlines. Peers were asked to review each other's topic sentences and guess the contents following the topic sentences. When peer students guessed wrong, the writers recognized their poorly-written topic sentences. Then, students write their methods, results, discussions, then the background and significance. The course incorporated peer-review practices. Students were asked to identify the strengths and weaknesses of other students' drafts and gave constructive comments to help improve each other's writing. Throughout the course, students have a lot of opportunities to practice reading, analyzing, writing, editing, and commenting.

The course is unique in implementing a two-hour writing session each week. We have a few designated writing locations, including three major libraries around in NTU campus and two coffee shops (my treat to students). We once wrote at another university's library when a student from that university enrolled in this course. Students were surprised to learn the quietness of these libraries. I also aim to use the allotted writing time to help them form a good routine writing habit. I also introduced students from different years to form a strong writing support group. They helped each other to "peer" review even after they had completed my course.

This is a core course for all of the chemical division graduate students using a learn-by-doing approach. Before the cruise, students were trained in the lab for various seawater analyses methods. We then arranged an afternoon for students to practice subsampling from seawater sampling bottles (Go-Flo and Niskin bottles). The bottles contained tap water, surface, and 1500m seawater. Students were asked to identify the samples based on their analyses, including silicate, phosphate, nitrate, and dissolved oxygen concentrations. A packing list was provided, and students packed for the cruise. A member from my lab provided any necessary assistance. We usually test various marine exploration instruments during the educational cruise and calibrate shipboard dissolved oxygen sensors. Students were asked to draw their expected nutrient and dissolved oxygen profiles on the first shipboard cruise meeting. Next, students perform shipboard nutrient analyses and preserve samples for shore-based analyses such as carbon chemistry and major/trace ion compositions. At the end of the cruise, students shared their preliminary finding to see how matching their real measurements differ from their expected profiles. Throughout the rest of the semester, students analyzed samples with different instrumentation each week. At the end of the semester, students provided one written report to answer the guiding questions of our cruise, a 3-5 min cruise video, and a comprehensive oral presentation of their findings. All seven faculties in the chemical division attended the presentation. The course effectively merges education and research, preparing students ready for their future field expeditions.

Being an assistant professor at the IONT and spending most of my recreational time at the beach, I received many marine-chemistry-related questions from local residents in our seaside towns. Here are some examples:

How safe is it for us to swim or SCUBA dive when the ocean water becomes yellowish after heavy rain or flooding events? Without any wastewater treatment plant, what are the impacts of our household and tourists' wastewater on the marine organisms? Is sunscreen really bad for corals? What is the relationship between the temperature of seawater and eutrophication; do they affect each other? In addition to the fact that eutrophication is caused by human behavior, human activity increases the CO2 in the atmosphere also changes the acidity of seawater; what other human impacts are there? What exactly does alkalinity mean? How is it related to coral growth, and how important is it to monitor?

Finding these questions so intriguing and amazed by local residents' curiosity, I decided to offer an advanced course designed to train graduate and advanced undergraduate students to obtain knowledge to help answer some of these questions. Students were motivated to dig out "research-based" information. Through this course, they were trained to bridge the most updated scientific research results with the locals. One student volunteer helped analyze samples collected by the local resident from their reef waters. Students interpreted the data based on their marine chemistry background. After our final presentation at Xiaoliuqiu, my students became friends with the local residents. The locals took them to explore the beauty of the ocean through their eyes. Three students signed up for SCUBA diving tours during our visits. Two other students obtained Open Water SCUBA Diving License in the summer following this course. After the course, all students were proud to help answer local residents' questions and enjoyed the discussions after their presentations.

A unique design of this course is that we teamed up Taiwanese students with international students. Taiwanese students translated information only in Chinese while international students shared their countries' marine environmental protection plans. Students also have cultural exchanges. Although Taiwanese students delivered the final oral presentations to the local residents in Xiaoliuqiu, the international students usually put the literature search and PowerPoint together. They showed good teamwork and were all proud of each other's hard-working attitudes.

I offered this course to students enthusiastic about sharing marine science knowledge with the public to fulfill my passion. Students picked a topic of their interests and evolved it into a one-hour hands-on activity. They started by intensive literature search domestically and internationally. After we identified suitable topics, students gathered lecture notes and hands-on activities. Around mid-term week, students practiced teaching in our class. Peer students and I provided comments to improve the curriculum. The exciting portion of this course was that we teamed up with FanLiao High School (Grade 7-12), a town famous for its saltwater aquaculture. My students test the effectiveness of their developed curriculum on middle school students (Grades 7 & 8).

Many middle school students' parents own or work in aquaculture farms, but students had never wondered about the water quality or handled the farmed fish themselves. During my students' lectures, the local teenagers learned to tell the marine environment from the fish's morphology. Middle school students were guided to dissect the fish to learn different parts of the fish organs related to the environment.

After our introduction, the local students became curious about the overfertilization leading to exceedingly high nutrients in their waters. Middle school students were also very excited about harnessing the wave energy from the sea near them. The high school teachers who joined us were inspired by my students and said they would like to try new ways to teach. Receiving compliments from high school students and teachers, my students gained confidence in themselves and expressed that they would like to continue advocating for the marine sciences. A student shared her sympathy for the town's remote location. She said that she'd like to work on helping to bring equality among regions. My students from this course now work in a high school, Taiwan's biggest floating solar farm company, and the National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium. I keep close contact with these students and learn from their exciting new work lives too.  

 A core course for IONTU's undergraduate Marine Science Program 海研所提供的海洋學程必修課之ㄧ

The course provides a comprehensive introduction of instrumentation and methods for marine observation and monitoring. I am responsible for teaching the chemical methods in four hours. First week, I give a one-hour interactive lecture to introduce major and minor chemical compositions of seawater. We then visit the website of Taiwan's Ocean Conservation Administration to learn the parameters monitored for our ocean water. Key parameters, silicate, phosphate, and total alkalinity, are emphasized. Second and the third weeks are labs. In the first lab, I demonstrate and measure five unknown samples, including surface (10m) seawater, 1500 m seawater, Taipei City tap water, IONTU's drinking water, and lab's purified water. From the measured silicate and phosphate concentrations, students are asked to deduce the most likely sample sources. Then, students are asked to measure the samples' salinity to expand the dataset. They are allowed to make changes to the sample identifications. From our survey, we found that students often guess the surface and deep seawater wrong. We then show how the global nutrient data compared with our results. We brain storm together to provide the best explanation to why the nutrient distribution is like that. On the third week, we ran the CO2 lab modified form the published paper (https://tos.org/oceanography/article/ocean-acidification-the-role-of-co2) also available in Chinese (https://tos.org/oceanography/assets/docs/27-1_murphy_ch-trad.pdf) (note: translated by my student and I). We also use acid to perform a simple "titration" experiment. Then, we watched a video showing the real world total alkalinity titration. On the forth week, we review our labs and then go through issues in the ocean monitoring. We link nutrients to marine life: whales are nutrient cyclers, making them ecologically so significant that we'd better protect them for our sake. We ask why total alkalinity has not yet been included in the seawater monitoring program? How microplastics and pollutants unseen by human eyes are already damaging marine life? 

We also take student for a day trip to visit IONTU's New-Ocean-Researcher I. They're asked to write a visit report. 

Course Description

This is a general education course intended for international students studying at the National Taiwan University. The instructors of this course include experts from four key fields of Earth sciences, and we are eager to share our knowledge and understandings of the natural forces and phenomena surrounding the island of Taiwan (and maybe other islands!). Through this course, international students will learn about, and get familiar with the vibrancy, though sometimes unpredictable risk, of living on this beautiful island. This course will include lectures by the instructors, guest lectures, group discussions, and field trips to selected spots with important natural phenomena.

Course Objective

This course aims to provide international students a wide range of background knowledge about Earth sciences, natural forces and natural hazard mitigations. We hope this will increase their understanding of their surroundings, and further stimulate their interests and curiosities toward the nature, and maybe even related research topics in the future.

Course Requirement

The grade of this course will be determined by the attendance of lectures and field trips, group discussions, and a final report at the end of the semester. Students are asked to attend each class on time and to participate in class discussion actively. We will form student groups in the middle of the semester, and the groups will be given specific topics to be discussed during the field trips, as well as in the class discussion after the field trips. Other related information will be announced by CEIBA and NTU-mail during the semester, and students are asked to check these often.

References

Designated reading materials and references will be given to the students in the beginning of each semester.

好吧！常常講到海洋，尤其是化學，自己感到無比興奮的同時，旁邊就是，「... ... ... ...」，到底在講什麼拉？！還好總是有人願意幫忙翻譯成白話文，希望大家讀起來輕鬆愉快的同時，也對海洋化學有所理解囉！

對海洋教育推廣與分享有興趣的學生，很歡迎修習海洋教材教法，來利用創意，把海洋帶到教室裡，把學生帶到海上！