http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/invented_here.html#discussion http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/invented_here.html#post3564
He found that: "About half of the chairs agree that they encourage their non-tenured colleagues to develop e-resources for their courses and 88% agree that their colleagues are fairly evaluated with respect to their teaching efforts."

John's summary of his findings plus links to the survey questions and data are online at: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/DLESE/collections/survey_results.html]]> Kim Kastens 1252511340 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/invented_here.html#post3564 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/invented_here.html#post3627
- there is a perception that it is easier to develop a new instance than it is to get up to speed on an existing one;

- there is a often a built-in bias that "I'm smart enough" to figure this out myself and/or "I'm smarter than those guys who made this existing thing"; and

- there is a reluctance to accept an existing solution that is "good enough", we want one that is "just right".]]> Dale Chayes 1256673420 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/invented_here.html#post3627 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/invented_here.html#post3636
I think that it is more than a perception that it is easier to develop a new instance than adapt an old one. I find in meandering through the activities on “Teach the Earth” that many are not in turnkey form. (I am not referring to my propensity for tinkering, but whether the information could just be handed out to students, even assuming my class is the same as that of the contributor.) When you calculate the time to make the activity usable plus the time to find it in the first place, then it may well be easier to make your own. For some things, it is useful to have local examples and of course, pre-existing activities are unlikely to be from my area.

I think that the “Teach the Earth” website is a tremendous advance. In the past, I might have spent time trying to remember where I saw an activity (at a meeting, Journal of Geoscience Education or some other place) and then trying to get the materials. Still, finding relevant activities is a challenge even on “Teach the Earth.”

It is easy to feel that meandering through the website is not as productive a use of time as making progress on something of your own. I find interesting things this way, but generally not by searching. I don’t find using the search box at “Teach the Earth” that helpful unless I am looking for a specific exercise I already know exists. It makes you appreciate the work of indexers or bibliographic databases in making it possible to find subjects or papers that you didn’t know about.

For example, I just discovered that I have to some extent duplicated Patricia Cashman’s activity on earthquake recurrence and geologic time at Pallett Creek. I suppose that when I first learned about the Pallet Creek studies in Susan Hough’s book Earthshaking Science, I might have looked at the SERC website to see if anyone had already used it. However, I didn’t and I produced a variant approach from scratch.

So I would say that there are advantages to developing your own material, difficulties continue in obtaining existing activities (althouth less than in the past), but the field is headed in the right direction.
]]> Martin Farley 1258639380 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/invented_here.html#post3636 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/invented_here.html#post3644
Still, I think there is an overall economy of effort in being able to readily access visualizations (see On the Cutting Edge Teaching with Visualization Collections (http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization/index.html), or data processing and representation tools (e.g. any number of spread sheet exercises)--why should we all take the time to reinvent functions that are pretty much universally used in the same way (OK, some modification may still be needed)? The fact that I can find credentialed sources of data, tools, visualizations, etc. is very liberating for me--having access to these materials in the first place allows me to move ahead and do more creative work.

Perhaps the value of digital collections of resources lies in two other domains:
--Calibration; by reviewing existing resources in these digital collections it gives you some indication of the "norm" of what other colleagues are doing in similar courses in other settings; and
--Inspiration; seeing the nucleus of an idea presented in someone else's work (however imperfectly), and then seeking ways to present the same material but perhaps using novel approaches.

This is one reason why annotation services are so important: a given instructional resource gains so much more value when practical advice can be given about what works and what doesn't; what barriers were encountered with suggestions about how to overcome these problems; tips on how to modify an exercise to accommodate interests or needs of a special learning situation.

I wonder if part of the question about adoption v. adaptation is tied up with the fact that the geosciences don't have a curricular "canon"--a single unified sequence of topics that are universally taught in the same basic manner no matter who is teaching (e.g. classical physics which uses the same basic coverage of Newtonian mechanics, electricity and magnetism, etc. in any first year physics course). Sure, in an introductory physical geology course I'm sure most of us will teach about time, plate tectonics, rock and mineral identification, landforms in some way. But do you start with plate tectonics, infuse plate tectonics throughout the course, end with plate teconics as a unifying theme? And, unlike physics which uses the same basic time/distance/velocity/acceleration type exercises, we all tend to use examples that are meaningful to us personally, and also that span the globe: optimizing examples from our local geologic setting, from National Parks, from experiences we've had in our professional careers....The Earth just has a lot of great examples to choose from, and geoscientists don't seem to want to be penned in by some externally imposed set of criteria. (I'll explore issues of accreditation in a later posting). Thanks again for the comments. Keep them coming!

]]> Dave Mogk 1259688000 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/invented_here.html#post3644