MASK - increasing sea knowledge awareness among high school students using marine robots

COVID-19 pandemic impacted considerably the field of school education. In-presence learning was largely replace for blended learning or fully remote learning for extended periods of time. This has led in certain cases to increase the digital divide. Moreover, hands-on projects were limited by the same reasons. On the other hand, many universities fully exploited their capabilities and further developed the field of remote access to infrastructures allowing partners that could not travel to utilise the robots and installations from their homes. This is particularly helpful in the field of marine robotics where tests at sea are expensive and logistically complex. Finally, the e-learning and remote testing possibilities opened up an opportunity for smaller environmental footprint of teaching and testing activities. Exploiting these opportunities, a consortium of three universities and two high schools started the Marine Robots for better Sea Knowledge awareness (MASK) project. This paper presents the project and its initial results and provides qualitative assessment of the current results.