Do you recall your first geoscience course? For many geoscience teachers, it was this first taste of plate tectonics, landforms, fossils or oceanography that suddenly made us realize we had found our calling. We hope that some of today's new students who experience their first earth science courses will become inspired just like we did. Yet some students take a 100-level geology course because it seems to be the least-daunting way through their college's science requirement. Thus, faculty of introductory courses have a big job on their hands, managing a wide range of students, taking them through the basics of earth science, and hopefully imparting some inspiration along the way.

This web module is for those who teach introductory earth science courses. Here you will find ideas for designing a new course, spicing up an existing course design, or adding innovative activities or teaching methods.

Resources for Teaching Introductory Courses

• An extensive collection of introductory-level geoscience courses, spanning a host of geoscience topics
• Browse over 400 classroom and lab activities aimed at intro-level audiences
  
• The Starting Point - Teaching Entry-Level Geoscience, which contains over 30 modules built around pedagogic approaches for introductory courses, plus hundreds of example activities
• A special section aimed at preparing K-12 teachers for teaching earth science courses
• Strategies for working with large classes
• Tips on motivating your introductory students
  
• Outcomes, presentations and posters from the 2008 workshop
• A bookshelf of popular books used by faculty in their intro courses
• How to address misconceptions often held by intro-level students
  

Bring Google Earth into your Geoscience Classroom

SERC launched two online resources that may be useful for introductory courses.

Teaching with Google Earth is an in-depth site that explains many facets of how to use this tool in your geoscience classroom. You'll find a user's guide with a "tip sheet" handout for students, and a collection of activities that use Google Earth.

How to Teach Geologic Map Interpretation with Google Earth illustrates how Google Earth can help students visualize geologic structures. This module contains detailed examples for teaching several aspects of structural geology and contains a gallery of beautiful Google Earth locations for teaching map interpretation. Although these resources are part of the On the Cutting Edge Teaching Structural Geology resource collection, they can be easily adapted for use in introductory courses.