Postdoc for the Development of Virtual Ocean Learning Experience

Join our project to develop a virtual ship classroom to let oceanography (under)graduate students experience sea-going fieldwork!

Your job

While the experience of sea-going research is valuable, it is very expensive and logistically challenging to support large groups of students joining research expeditions at sea. Therefore, novel technologies to provide students with some experience similar to sea-going field work are needed. In 2023, we started development of a Virtual Ship Classroom, which has been tested in the Marine Science curriculum at Utrecht University. The development has so far focussed on physical oceanography but we are now ready extend to biology and geology too.In this postdoc project, you will join the team that develops the Virtual Ship Classroom. You will extend the code to include biogeochemistry data and sampling methods. You will particularly focus on developing a set of interactive python notebooks to let students work with biological and geological marine data collection. You will also help to evaluate the viability (and identify challenges) of integrating the 'virtual expedition' by assessing its pedagogical usability and student learning outcomes.

During the project, you will be involved in:

• creating python notebooks to take virtual biological and geological samples in the ocean, based on data from the Copernicus Marine Service and the oceanparcels.org framework;
• working with lecturers of (under)graduate courses to implement the notebooks into the course curriculum;
• support the assessment of the notebook’s effectiveness in pedagogical usability and students' intended learning outcomes using student observations, surveys and interviews.

You will work in a diverse and interdisciplinary team including colleagues with expertise in oceanography, virtual reality, and education research.

Your qualities

Our ideal candidate has a driven and collaborative spirit and has multiple of the following:

• a PhD in a field related to oceanography or marine sciences;
• strong skills in python programming;
• motivated to cooperate within a dynamic, diverse, multidisciplinary research team;
• excellent level of written and spoken English;
• experience in developing educational material would be considered a plus;
• preferably experience with software development practices such as version control and unit-testing.

Our offer

We offer:

• a position for 21 months;
• a working week of 38 hours and a gross monthly salary between €3,345 and €5,278 in the case of full-time employment (salary scale 10 under the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO NU));
• 8% holiday pay and 8.3% year-end bonus;
• a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave and flexible terms of employment based on the CAO NU.