Aquaculture has, perhaps more than any other agriculture or academic content area, the potential for interdisciplinary and collaborative instruction. The multifaceted nature of aquaculture provides numerous opportunities and classroom activities to engage students in any number of subject matter areas. Students are confronted with complex problems that allow them to experiment and build their problem solving and cooperative learning skills. These problems help translate the academic principles; they are required to learn, into real-world applications. The hands-on nature of many of these activities helps hold student interest and provide ongoing motivation. Concepts learned can be applied in many other fields and can help better prepare students for higher education. Table 1 indicates other academic areas that relate directly or indirectly to aquaculture.
The connections to biology and chemistry are readily apparent but connections to other disciplines require more effort. Our role as Extension educators and content specialists is to help teachers make and explore these connections. This presentation describes methods to maximize the cross curricular capacity and effectiveness of an aquaculture teaching platform.