The Unknown Fossil Report part of Activities
Students each receive a fossil of unknown identity. They describe the specimen in as much detail as possible. They interpret as much information as they can from the specimen.

Oral Presentation of a Fossil Group part of Activities
Students present a 10 minute Powerpoint presentation on a fossil group of their interest. Illustrations and handouts are required.

Surviving Extinction, A Journey Through Time part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Explore prehistoric environments over the past 350 million years, make good decisions to avoid deadly predators, and discover real expedition sites as you chart your own path through time. 99% of all species that ...

Analyzing datasets in ecology and evolution to teach the nature and process of science part of CUREnet:CURE Collection
This quarter-long project forms the basis of a third-year course for majors and nonmajors at the University of Washington, Bothell called Science Methods and Practice. Students use databases to identify novel research questions, and extract data to test their hypotheses. They frame the question with primary literature, address the questions with inferential statistics, and discuss the results with more primary literature. The product is a scientific paper; each step of the process is scaffolded and evaluated. Given time limitations, we avoid devoting time to data collection; instead, we sharpen students' ability to make sense of a large body of quantitative data, a situation they may rarely have encountered. We treat statistics with a strictly conceptual, pragmatic, and abbreviated approach; i.e., we ask students to know which basic test to choose to assess a linear relationship vs. a difference between two means. We stress the need for a normal distribution in order to use these tests, and how to interpret the results; we leave the rest for stats courses, and we do not teach the mathematics. This approach proves beneficial even to those who have already had a statistics course, because it is often the first time they make decisions about applying statistics to their own research questions. We incorporate peer review and collaborative work throughout the quarter. We form collaborative groups around the research questions they ask, enabling them to share primary literature they find, and preparing them well to review each other's writing. We encourage them to cite each other's work. They write formal peer reviews of each other's papers, and they submit their final paper with a letter-to-the-editor highlighting how their research has addressed previous feedback. A major advantage of this course is that an instructor can easily modify it to suit any area of expertise. Students have worked with data about how a snail's morphology changes in response to its environment (Price, 2012), how students understand genetic drift (Price et al. 2014), maximum body size in the fossil record (Payne et al. 2008), range shifts (Ettinger et al. 2011), and urban crop pollination (Waters and Clifford 2014).

Fantastic Prehistoric Beasts and Where/When to Find Them part of Guided Inquiry Introductory Geology Labs:Activities
Average inquiry level: Guided inquiry This inquiry-based lab explores the fossil record by having students use various characteristics of fossils to devise a classification scheme and eventually apply the geologic ...

Creative Discovery Project: Developing Accurate & Accessible Science Communication part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
The aim of this project is for students to gain experience in communicating scientific evidence to a public audience. For example, how is it that science journalists, museum experts, podcasters, and documentarians ...

The Evolution of Earth through Time part of Rates and Time:Teaching Activities
This activity is designed for large freshman courses (>200 students) and is used in-class. The activity requires a short (15 minute) overview of Earth history before students have the opportunity to work through ...

Depositional Environments and Geologic History Labs part of Rates and Time:Teaching Activities
This is a pair of labs that incrementally prepare students to interpret the geologic history of a rock sequence. The first lab introduces students to depositional environments and fossils. The second lab presents a ...

Exploring the Grand Canyon: Layers and Superposition part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Nearly two billion years of the Earth's geological history has been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layers of rock while the Colorado Plateau was uplifted. ...

Museum Collections: Junk Drawers or Mirrors of Fossil Diversity? part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Are museum collections a perfect reflection of diversity in the past, or are they a junk drawer full of odds and ends that just happen to be collected? The fossil record is the best tool we have for studying ...

Exploring the nature of geoscience using cartoon cards part of Integrate:Workshops and Webinars:Teaching the Methods of Geoscience:Activities
In this activity, students work in groups to put a set of cartoon cards in order, much in the way that we might assemble a geologic history. The primary goal of the activity is to explore the nature of science in general and the nature of geoscience or historical science specifically, without requiring any content knowledge.

Biozones, stratigraphic log correlation, and corresponding interpretation of paleoenvironments. part of Rates and Time:Teaching Activities
This exercise is a guided opportunity for any number of students (even hundreds) to start using recently learned, lower-level knowledge about stratigraphy and biostratigraphy in an integrative, interpretation ...

Personal Timeline part of Rates and Time:Teaching Activities
Students start this worksheet by listing the most important events in their own lives, plotting them on a timeline, and then doing the same with Earth history events. Usually, their personal timelines will resemble ...

Fauna of Waulsortian Mounds part of Geoscience in the Field:Activities
This is a field trip to local exposures of potential waulsortian carbonate mud mounds. The students will prepare by reading 1-2 publications on the subject and then we will travel to see and collect samples from ...

First Reef-building Animals, Australia part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Archaeocyathids were important marine organism that lived in shallow tropical and subtropical waters of the early Cambrian Period around 530 million years ago. They became the planet's very first reef-builders ...

Sedimentation of Mud - Observation and Analysis part of Videos:Activities
The process of mud settling in a graduated cylinder was filmed as a time lapse series over about 2 hours. Students observe and analyze the sedimentation process.

Aurora Mastodont Project - Matrix Analyses Project part of Undergraduate Research:2014 Workshop:Activities
This is a laboratory based assignment that is for Introductory level geoscience classes (Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Earth Science) that brings an authentic research experience to your students. In the ...

Digging for Fossils part of Geoscience in Two-year Colleges:Activities
"Digging for Fossils": A student laboratory activity

An Interactive Game Approach to Learning in Historical Geology and Paleontology part of Starting Point-Teaching Entry Level Geoscience:Games:Examples
The instructor uses a series of games to help students identify and answer questions about fossils. The game grows more complex over time as the instructors add rules and phyla to identify. -

Geologic and Navajo Time Line part of Rates and Time:Teaching Activities
Students develop a time line using registrar tape and correlating marking off divisions of geologic eras. Above this they develop a Navajo time line of creation. Each week they focusing on the topic (era/period) of ...