Reef Builders through Time
Peg Yacobucci, Bowling Green State University-Main Campus
Students will use the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) to explore the history of reef-building animals through time. They will document diversity and extinction patterns through time for seven reef-building marine ...

Discover Plate Tectonics
Angela Daneshmand, Santiago Canyon College
This is a student-centered activity for a synchronous online course where students access google slides to complete during a video conferencing session (eg. Zoom) in break out rooms. Students will be introduced to ...

Constructing a 3D bathymetry model
Jessica Kleiss, Lewis & Clark College
Student groups build a scaled cardboard physical model of a seafloor feature in a box, and then close the box and affix a scale. Student groups then swap boxes and perform "soundings" to determine which ...

Field Presentation
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt. San Antonio College
During the E-STEM Field Course, each student was responsible for a field presentation related to a geology, geomorphology, hydrology, and/or ecology topic specific to the Sierras or Owens Valley. Depending on the ...

Modeling Rare Plant Distributions Using ArcGIS
Elizabeth Crook, University of California-Irvine
In this activity, students work with rare plant occurrence data from the Nature Reserve of Orange County, California to create species distribution maps in ArcGIS. Students are given shapefiles of species ...

Interactive Anti-Harassment/Discrimination Training
Michael Hubenthal, EarthScope
An interactive workshop designed to encourage a more inclusive geoscience culture that is resistant to harassment and discrimination by educating and empowering undergraduate students. The curriculum is targeted ...

Exploring Primary Productivity
Catherine Hill, Arizona Western College
Interacting with Data: Using interactive on-line graphs and datasets created by the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) from data collected from six oceanic arrays using hundreds of instruments, students can ...

Deep Sea Microbes Jigsaw
Beverly Owens, Cleveland Early College High School; Molly Ludwick, Kings Mountain Middle School
This activity will help students to explore characteristics of microbes that live in the deep sea. This activity can be conducted as a jigsaw or research project, and can be used with face-to-face, remote, and ...

Data Analysis Activity Using MATLAB
Michael Ray, California State University-Sacramento
In this activity students will develop a model of air resistance, then perform an experiment using coffee filters, rulers and a stopwatch to test it. They will collect the data, then analyze it and produce a high ...

Did Early Farmers Alter Climate?
Sue Swanson, Beloit College
The overarching goal of this exercise is for students to explore the early anthropogenic hypothesis, which claims that early agriculture had a substantial impact on greenhouse gases and global climate thousands of ...

Molecular Parasitology
Swati Agrawal, University of Mary Washington
In Spring 2021, we piloted a mini-CURE where student groups from University of Mary Washington and Georgia State University collaboratively completed research projects as part of a research-intensive course on Molecular Parasitology. The benefits of this approach were immediately obvious as students interacted across institutions, learned from each other's disciplinary expertise while informing their own research with data collected by their collaborators.

Modeling a voltage divider
Michele McColgan, Siena College
This is a homework assignment in a course in electronics for sophomore-level physics students on the topic of voltage dividers. At the start of the semester, students receive a kit of electronic components ...

Using MATLAB to understand distributions: Pokémon GO
Benjamin Bratton, Vanderbilt University
This problem set will help teach students how to describe real world distributions. Data science skills that will be covered include measures of central tendency and spread, transformations of distributions, ...

Using "Dante's Peak" to Discuss Response to Risk
Michael Phillips, Illinois Valley Community College
In this classroom activity, students watch the movie "Dante's Peak" up to the point where Harry Dalton's supervisor arrives and talks to the town council. Students then compare and contrast Harry's assessment and advice to that of his supervisor, discuss the reaction of the town council members, and develop their own recommendations for how the scientists and town should proceed.

Introduction to the Trilobites: Morphology, Macroevolution and More
Michelle Casey, University of Kansas Main Campus
The learning goals for this lab are the following: 1) to familiarize students with the anatomy and terminology relating to trilobites; 2) to give students experience identifying morphologic structures on real ...

Public Service Announcement (PSA) About Climate Change (Higher Ed)
Juliette Rooney-Varga, University of Massachusetts-Lowell
Producing a PSA is an ideal culminating project for an interdisciplinary course on climate change and related topics. The PSA assignment requires high-level synthesis of content and, through it, students learn first-hand about the challenges of communicating about climate change to a general audience in a compelling way. The assignment offers the opportunity for students to engage with the material, consider what they want society to understand or do, use creativity and twenty-first century technology and communication tools, and become empowered to enter societal discourse about climate change.

Animation for grades 6-12
candace dunlap
Students will create an animation to represent one of the many feedback loops that influences climate change. To create their animation, students will use clay, cut paper, whiteboard or other materials commonly ...

Using Google Earth to measure seacliff erosion rates
Alfred Hochstaedter, Monterey Peninsula College
This lab uses Google Earth to measure the rate of seacliff retreat. It touches upon coastal processes, natural hazards, and coastal management issues. The central focus of the lab is in the Monterey Bay area.

Using Univariate Statistics to Understand Regional Drainage Patterns
Peter Adams, University of Florida
In this activity, students use MATLAB to compare two data sets of organic matter content in order to provide quantitative evidence that tests the null hypothesis that sediment samples have the same fluvial source. ...

Volume of oceans, and sea-level variations
Charly Bank, University of Toronto
The activity combines aspects of Earth science (volume of oceans and ice sheets) with calculus (area of a 1x1 degree tile) and Matlab programming. Students calculate the volume of oceans and of ice sheets given the ...