## 2 NOAA Ocean Satellite Course  
The NOAA Ocean Satellite Course was initially offered in 2006 by the WCN of the NOAA CoastWatch program. Since that time, the course has been held annually, primarily on the West Coast of the United States. The goal of the course is to provide participants with the knowledge and tools they require to incorporate off-the-shelf satellite data products into their operational activities, without delving too much into the details of how the products are made. This distinction differentiates the NOAA Ocean Satellite Course from other well-established satellite remote sensing courses that cover such topics as ocean optics, atmospheric corrections, ocean color algorithms, and image analysis (e.g., [[http://www.geo.cornell.edu/ocean/satellite/](http://www.geo.cornell.edu/ocean/satellite/)]([http://www.geo.cornell.edu/ocean/satellite/](http://www.geo.cornell.edu/ocean/satellite/))). In addition, the NOAA Ocean Satellite Course has never had dedicated staff in the way that the NASA Applied Remote Sensing Training (ARSET) program [10] or the COMET program do [11], which are described in this special issue. EUMETSAT, Europe's operational satellite agency, has offered courses with a scope and target audience similar to those of the NOAA course since 2017 [12]. However, to our knowledge these types of training courses are not well documented in the literature. With this paper we hope to contribute to building a body of knowledge about effective training activities that target potential operational users of ocean satellite data, while placing only moderate demands on limited human and financial resources. The primary target audiences for the NOAA course are scientists and managers within the NOAA line offices of NMFS and the National Ocean Service (NOS) who are involved in operational activities but are not currently using satellite data in their work. Course attendance has generally been between 20 to 30 participants per year, and of the over 350 total participants (Figure 1), approximately 75% have been NOAA employees and affiliates (Figure 2). The course is offered at no cost to participants, thereby reducing financial barriers and drawing participants who might be uncertain about whether a tuition fee is a justifiable cost. Although the course is conducted by the regional WCN, it is open to participants across the country. Figure 1: The number of participants in the NOAA satellite course since 2006 (black), and the number of survey responses received back from each year’s participants (gray). The analytical tools we use in the course are based on the skill-set and analytical software package preferences of the participants, which are determined through the course registration form. During the course beginnings, ArcGIS [13] and Matlab(r) [14] were the most commonly used software packages (Figure 3). Over the years, there has been a steady increase in the use of R [15], and currently R and ArcGIS are the two most commonly used packages. In 2017, Python [16] started appearing as a software used by some participants, but it is currently not widely used by course participants. Python [16] and R [15] are both available under open source licensing, which is advantageous to operational users without the resources to buy expensive software licenses. By teaching in alignment with the software already being used by the participants, we leverage preexisting skills sets and avoid the challenge of introducing unfamiliar software. As a result, the hands-on portion of the course can focus on techniques to bring satellite data into the software packages and convert the data into a format that is usable to the participant. The participants can typically take over from that point and apply the data to their projects. In effect, the course becomes an exercise in capacity building that can be taken back to the workplace and integrated into an existing operational workflow. Figure 3: Software utilization of course participants prior to the course, as indicated on their course registration form.