It's About Time: Teaching the Temporal Aspects of Geoscience
Information for Contributors
This site was created to support a session at GSA meeting in 2005. Session Themes | Poster Guidelines | Poster Submission
Session Themes
Determining rates of geoscience processes and dates of key events lie at the heart of geoscience research. Concepts associated with how geoscientists determine rates and dates are difficult for students to learn and challenging for instructors to teach. An understanding of geologic time is important for all students in geoscience courses. This session is designed to allow the entire GSA community to come together to share and discuss the variety of ways in which we teach about various aspects of time, including rates, dating techniques, timescales, recurrence intervals, predictions, and so forth. We encourage posters on strategies for teaching how geoscientists date events using paleontology, radiometric dating, relative proxy data, and other techniques and on strategies for bringing cutting edge geochronologic research into the classroom. Because of the importance of geologic time to geoscience education, this session calls for discipline-wide reflection of the role of dates, rates, and geologic time in the preparation of future geoscientists and in geoscience curriculum at all levels (K-16, informal education).
This session will showcase the breadth of activities, strategies and methods for teaching about dates, rates, and time that are used in the many disciplines encompassed by geoscience education. We invite contributions demonstrating the range of ways geoscientists determine rates and dates, as well as the use of class activities that promote student learning, e.g.
- In-class activity
- Assignment or problem set
- Importance of teaching about dates, rates, and time in the classroom
- Cutting-edge research about dates and rates
- Research on learning about time, dates, or rates
Poster Guidelines
To assist colleagues in improving instruction about geologic rates and dates and geologic time in their own settings, we ask all contributors to address:
- learning goals (e.g. content and concepts, geoscience skills, higher order thinking skills, other skills);
- context (e.g. audience and role of the activity in a course or other learning environment);
- materials, data, tools, logistics;
- and evaluation of student learning (goals and techniques).
- Material describing evaluation of the activity and its impact on learning.
- Practical advice and tips for instructors including aspects of the activity that are particularly difficult for students
- Concepts or skills relating to rates and dates that are essential for all geoscience students
- Strategies for bringing students in contact with current research on dates, rates, and time into students experiences
- New opportunites for teaching arising from new research and research methodologies
Poster Submission
The contributions to this session will be preserved in an on-line searchable collection designed to foster continued sharing and interaction. To make the session and the resulting collection of highest use as we think about teaching and work to adapt and adopt ideas from colleagues, we ask that each contributor:
- Submit an abstract for Session T104 that introduces or summarizes the example they wish to present (Deadline July 12, 2005).Session Abstracts
- Complete the submission form (offline, no longer valid), which includes uploading a pdf file of their poster, as soon as possible.
- Display your poster at the session, Sunday, October 16 in association with the Welcoming Reception from 6:00-8:00 in the evening.
The submission form must be completed in a single session (leaving the session erases the data) at the same time your poster is uploaded. You may find it simplest to review the questions on the form, compose brief answers to them offline and then actually fill out the form in one go once your poster is complete. You may wish to use the same text in the poster that you develop for the form below.
