ROV3G oceanographic cruise is first and foremost a pedagogic project that intends to train Master students (master 3G, Université Côte d'Azur) to the scientific methodology. They gain knowledge about the Marine Geosciences in general, and modern tools in this field in particular. Based on existing knowledge of the geology and structure of the Ligurian margin, students identify a knowledge gap, pose a scientific question, and propose to fill it by acquiring new data.

This educational approach began during the TELEPRESENCE campaign (2018), taking advantage of this technological trial mission to test telepresence between the oceanographic vessel Europe and land. During these two campaigns, the students and part of the teaching team were based in a conference room equipped with a videoconferencing system. Several screens allowed the shore team to follow both the positioning of the vessel and the HROV dive. The students were able to visit the ship and meet the teams again when they were mobilised in the port of Nice, which gave them a chance to understand how a campaign works and to meet the various people involved in the mission.

During the ROV3G mission, the student team was divided into shifts of 2-3 people. The pace of the shifts was adapted according to the type and duration of the acquisitions (2 hours during the acquisition of the ME70 bathymetry, 1 hour during the HROV dive), so that everyone could participate. A handwritten and an electronic watch book were kept by the students. At the start of the day, the shore team and the onboard team met by video to define the day's objectives, which could be achieved depending on the weather. At the end of the day, the whole team met again to set the objectives for the following day.

During the HROV dive, as the dive was short, the entire land-based scientific team was present in the videoconference room to follow the dive. The watch students could communicate their instructions to the on-board teaching team, who were equipped with a headset and microphone, and who then transmitted these instructions to the HROV pilots. The use of headphones had been made necessary by impressions gathered during the TELEPRESENCE mission, during which the HROV pilots had been annoyed by the hubbub coming from the conference room, which sometimes drowned out the students' instructions. Telepresence was considered by the students to be a very good solution for following a campaign at sea, as some students had been very sensitive to seasickness during the marine geophysics teaching campaign that had taken place a few weeks earlier on the N/O Téthys. The connection was quite satisfactory, despite a few minutes' interruption due to the orientation of Europe's antenna in relation to the satellites. 

A short video was produced by the University about this pedagogic project : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj2eocXhWh0