Unit 3: Updating Courses and Programs for Cultural Relevance

Asynchronous Preparation

The goal of the asynchronous work is very concrete: we would like each team member to update one lecture or course activity that you currently use in one of your classes with an eye towards "cultural relevance." Cultural relevance can mean many things based on the background of your students/local context of your institution, so we are giving you options to decide what is most important for you and your class.

To get you thinking, we offer a menu of choose-your-own adventure readings. Read one or two that speak to changes you want to make:

READ

• Supporting Indigenous students: Todd, W.F., Towne, C.E., & Clarke, J.B. (2023). Importance of centering traditional knowledge and Indigenous culture in geoscience education, Journal of Geoscience Education, 71:3, 403-414, DOI: 10.1080/10899995.2023.2172976
• Incorporating environmental justice:
• Place-based education: Semken, S., Ward, E.G., Moosavi, S., & Chinn, P.W.U (2017). Place-Based Education in Geoscience: Theory, Research, Practice, and Assessment. Journal of Geoscience Education 65, 542-562.
• Community-engaged coursework: Fortner, S.K., Scherer, H.H., & Ritter, J.B. (2022). Community Engagement in the Earth Sciences: A situated Learning Model at Wittenberg University.  DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-3877-0.ch028

COURSE ACTIVITY EXAMPLES

These serve as examples as you work to revise your activity. Feel free to browse them (or not), as you find useful.

• GeoContext: slides/modules that discuss specific geoscience topics with an eye towards historical context
• Materials for data-based EJ course: Slides, lab materials, and discussion questions from a 4000-level EJ course
• Discussion questions about the Anthropocene + Indigenous conceptions of climate change: Used as the final reading assignment for intro-level earth science course
• Lab about 2011 Mississippi River flood and intentional flooding of Birds Point-New Madrid floodway: Used in 2000-level geomorphology course
• InTeGrate page with EJ materials

ACTION

1. Choose one course activity that you currently use but would like to revise.
   • This can range from a small class activity to a lab, but we want to keep it relatively small (rather than thinking about redesigning a course)
2. Think through a "target" for that revision – do you want it to better reflect the local geologic and human history, reach a different population of students than it appeals to now, offer multiple languages or modalities, etc?
3. Employing backwards design (as described in the introductory segment of this InTeGrate webinar), create learning objectives for the revised activity. At least one of these objectives should reflect your target goal.
4. Browse the examples for inspiration if needed, they cover a range of implementations and a few topics
5. More examples are available across the Teach the Earth collection as well
6. Try to fully prepare the activity as you would if you were teaching
7. No later than Wednesday, March 5, use the submission form to:
   1. Indicate the topic or course you chose to develop an activity for (this will help us organize small groups for the synchronous meeting)
   2. Prepare one slide for the synchronous meeting that describes your activity and learning goals

Synchronous Meeting

Goals:

• Participants will develop and share examples of revised course activities
• Participants will identify common success and challenges
• Departmental teams will brainstorm next steps in individual and departmental implementation

Agenda:

12:00 PM Welcome, Response to Unit 2 Roadcheck

12:05 PM Split into small groups based on activity topic: rock ID/hardrock topics, high student autonomy assignments, water/hydrology, other

• Each person presents their slide
  • Brief questions about specifics
• Guided discussion
  • What felt easy about altering this activity? What was difficult?
  • What barriers did you encounter for this activity? More broadly, if you've attempted to make these types of changes, what barriers have you encountered (e.g. lack of background knowledge, not aware of relevant datasets, department friction)?

12:35 PM Large group discussion

• Highlight any activities folks are most excited about
• Share any common challenges that arose in the small groups
• What resources do folks need to make curricular changes? (make a list that could be for PIs to source or could be a topic for the Fall PD)

12:50 PM Scales of influence

• You have (at least some) autonomy in your class, but not full autonomy over the department or the discipline
• Course matrix is one framework for discussions about course content at the departmental level (Link to course matrix)
• "Culturally relevant" topics could be an essential skill for your department – where do they fit in the curriculum?

12:55 PM Wrap-up; Announcements; Roadcheck

Additional and optional resources

Rogers, S. L., Lau, L., Dowey, N., Sheikh, H., and Williams, R.: Geology uprooted! Decolonising the curriculum for geologists, Geosci. Commun., 5, 189–204, https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-5-189-2022, 2022.

Manigault-Bryant and Constantine, 2024. Black studies and the production of environmental justice knowledge. Environmental Justice, https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2024.0040

David William Mogk & Jeffrey Lester King (1995) Service Learning in Geology Classes, Journal of Geological Education, 43:5, 461-465, DOI: 10.5408/0022-1368-43.5.461

Kroeker, K. (2023). "Chapter 16: Community-engaged research in the natural sciences: centering listening in the classroom". In Teaching Environmental Justice. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Retrieved Feb 18, 2025, from https://doi.org/10.4337/9781789905069.00028