Recommended SERC Resources

Important Areas of the SERC Website

• Cutting Edge Home Page
• Observing and Assessing Student Learning
• Designing Effective and Innovative Courses
• Teach the Earth: the SERC Geoscience Portal
• Starting Point: Teaching Introductory Geoscience: This site provides a wealth of information on different pedagogical approaches that can be used in the classroom. Along with each pedagogy, there is a collection of geoscience specific activities that can be done in class.
• Using Data in the Classroom: This multidisciplinary portal provides links to datasets, tools, and information on how to use datasets in the classroom.
• Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences: This website provides information on the issues involved in teaching quantitative skills and methods for doing so as well as additional resources and a community of other faculty who are all attempting this challenging task.
• Building Strong Geoscience Departments: This website provides links to information about the challenges and opportunities facing today's Geoscience Departments.
• Journal of Geoscience Education: JGE is a product of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers and is one of the premier journals in geoscience education. There are online versions of their articles since 2001.
• Safety in the Field: This part of the NAGT site is based on work by Barb Tewksbury.
• Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum: Len Vacher and his colleagues have developed individual learning units that have students developing Excel Spreadsheets to solve geoscience problems.

Geophysics-Specific Resources

• Geophysics Knowledge Survey Questions: Knowledge Surveys are an assessment tool developed by Dexter Perkins and Karl Wirth.
• Borehole Logging from sample Collection to Borehole Geophysics: This activity was submitted to the 2005 Teaching Hydrogeology Workshop.
• Tsunami, earthquake, and Plate Tectonic Movement Visualizations from the Cutting Edge Teaching with Visualizations website.
• Exploring the Yellowstone Geoecosystem: This collection contains an assortment of digital resources relevant to the many components of the Yellowstone Geoecosystem: geology, geophysics, physiography, hydrology, biota (from microbes to grizzly bears), and human activities and their consequences in this amazing natural laboratory. There is also an abundance of maps, images, virtual field trips, datasets, technical papers and general information.