Online Ocean Studies at Amarillo College

In the spring semester of 2008, Amarillo College began offering Online Ocean Studies from the American Meteorological Association as a 4 credit hour lab science. This is the second online science class offered by the Physical Science Department, the first being Online Weather Studies also from the American Meteorological Society. Both of these courses are completely online classes with no face-to-face meetings with the instructor. The introduction of these two courses compliment the current course offerings in chemistry, physics, biology and earth sciences and allows Amarillo College students to complete their science requirement online.

The first semester of Online Ocean Studies was delivered to the students without any modification to the material as received from the AMS. During the AMS Ocean Studies Implementation Workshop in July 2008 at the University of Washington many ideas were presented which will be incorporated in the Online Ocean Studies course, such as near real-time data from ARGOS Buoys. The new material will also be included in on-campus courses in geology and earth science

Amarillo College is a two-year community college located in the panhandle of Texas in the city of Amarillo. Amarillo College serves a student body of approximately 10,000 credit seeking students and another 11,000 in continuing education classes. Of the credit seeking students approximately 35% are of various minorities and 25% are Hispanic, making Amarillo College a Hispanic Serving Institution.