Initial Publication Date: June 8, 2017
Resources for Teaching, on the SERC Website
Compiled by Carol Ormand, SERC, for the 2017 workshop for Early Career Faculty in the Geosciences
The Science Education Resource Center (SERC) website has a vast array of resources to support geoscience teaching (and more). In fact, it's so vast that it can be a bit daunting: more than 30,000 pages of content includes community contributions of more than 5,000 teaching activities (more than a third of them peer-reviewed!), as of mid-2017. This page of links is intended to provide an all-too-brief guided tour of the website, as a jumping-off point for discussion/Q&A.
Of special interest for early career faculty
- The early career geoscience faculty website has a set of pages about efficient, effective teaching: how to teach well, without it taking over your life
- Designing Effective and Innovative Courses
On specific topics
- The On the Cutting Edge project, of which this workshop is a part, has modules on a wide range of courses and topics
On teaching methods
- Expanding Your Teaching Toolkit is a page of resources to make your courses more interactive. If you're not sure where to begin, in terms of incorporating active learning pedagogies into your teaching, start here.
- Pedagogy in Action aims to help faculty put into practice in the classroom what we've learned from research on learning. It includes detailed descriptions of the what, why and how of various teaching methods and has a collection of examples of teaching activities using each method. If you're ready to dive in, these pages are for you.
- On the Cutting Edge has run a number of webinars on effective teaching methods.
On teaching a concept or skill across multiple courses
- The InTeGrate project is all about teaching about sustainability across the curriculum, and includes information on how to teach sustainability as well as modules and courses that you can adopt or adapt for your classroom.
- The Spatial Thinking Workbook is a collection of teaching activities designed to strengthen geoscience students' penetrative thinking skills: the ability to visualize spatial relations inside an object.
- The Math You Need, When You Need It is a set of math tutorials for students in introductory geoscience courses.
On teaching in particular situations
- Large, Introductory Geoscience Classes
- At Two-Year Colleges
- On the First Day of Class
- Teaching Urban Students
- Teaching In the Field
Strategies for finding what you're looking for
- Use the search box on SERC's front page
- Use SERC's site guides
- Go to the Teach the Earth portal, designed especially for geoscience educators