Instructors can hit unanticipated roadblocks to covering content when students have deficiencies in "geo-competencies" such as quantitative skills, data analysis and geographic awareness. This workshop ...

Research in STEM disciplines has revealed a suite of empirically validated instructional practices that can contribute to improvements in student learning and a reduction in attrition. We will outline a series of ...

Research on undergraduate education programs has identified integration across disciplines as an ongoing challenge. This workshop will explore approaches to managing the integration of disciplines and perspectives. ...

The Geoscience Education Research (GER) Community Planning workshop will serve as a forum for discussion by the GER community on what is most needed to support current and future geoscience education researchers. ...

This workshop is designed specifically for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and others who are interested in pursuing academic careers in the geosciences. Workshop leaders will provide guidance and ...

NGSS-ESS aligned instruction will naturally provide many opportunities for teachers to observe and record evidence of student learning. Assessment tasks comprised of multiple components reflect the connections ...

Science and academia have a culture that can be challenging for students, particularly those from groups underrepresented in the STEM fields. This session will guide participants in supporting students and building ...

Event page for the 2016 Earth Educators' Rendezvous Tuesday A teaching demonstrations session, detailing time, location, facilitators, and abstracts for geoscience education activities including geoethics, systems thinking, YouTube video snips, two-stage exams, CogSketch worksheets, green energy labs, and FTIR mineral identification.

Event page for Tuesday Session B of the 2016 Earth Educators' Rendezvous, featuring teaching demonstrations on geoscience education topics including groundwater systems, sediment transport, PCB remediation, geochronology with zircon analysis, cloud formation, solar system modeling, and lunar phases, each with abstracts and presenter details.

Of all the STEM disciplines, the geosciences ranks among the lowest in ethnic and racial diversity. As the demand for well-qualified geoscientists increases, it is essential for our community to broaden ...

Summary Video is increasingly being used as an educational tool in college science courses. Even if we are not assigning videos, students are independently looking to places like YouTube to supplement their ...

The objectives of this activity are to make lecture more interactive, introduce methods used in lab, and increase lecture attendance. The activity is presented in the context of a lecture on groundwater which ...

Geoethics is an important part of students' pre-professional training, but is typically not formally included in a degree program in a dedicated course or embedded in existing courses. This demonstration will introduce resources available for teaching Geoethics, basic principles that can be introduced (e.g., responsible conduct of research, responsibilities of using and communicating geoscience to the community, stewardship of Earth), and suggested instructional methods. A series of interactive "two minute" ethical challenges and case studies will demonstrate how Geoethics can be effectively taught in all geoscience classrooms.

My lab activity uses simple stream systems to teach and reinforce concepts in introductory geology courses. Each group of students receives a pvc half-pipe that they partially fill with a sand-gravel mixture to ...

This activity introduces systems and systems thinking. The activity could be used in almost any course and includes an introduction of terminology, motivation for using systems thinking, practice reading, as well ...

Multimedia video is recognized as a powerful medium for deploying applicable best practices in teaching and learning. I have discovered, vetted, and curated over 1,000 YouTube videos of interest relevant to ...

Students are given information about Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). This information helps them to understand that these are persistent legacy contaminants banned in 1977 by the EPA for concerns about the ...

Students take an exam individually. Once they complete the exam they turn it in and get into a group with 3 other students. The students then take the identical test but this time they work together on the ...

This application was developed to promote deeper understanding of the science of geochronology, including the integration of crystal-scale relative dating principles with numerical dating via radioisotope ...

Prior to redesigning the entire undergraduate geology curriculum at Lake Superior State University we conducted a national survey of all undergraduate geoscience programs through the American Geosciences Institute. ...

Sustainability themes, in terms of meeting the needs of human society while sustaining environmental support systems of the planet, can be applied to a broad range of courses in the geosciences and provide the ...

In this activity, designed for introductory level undergraduates, but adaptable for K-16 learners, we explore fundamental ideas about the Ideal Gas Law as it applies to the atmosphere, and specifically to the ...

Sketching is a valuable activity to help students develop spatial skills and understand difficult geoscience concepts. Yet, sketching is rarely implemented at the introductory level due to the time needed to grade ...

Participants will use low-cost materials to construct scientifically accurate models in the classroom. The first model will allow the student to investigate the Earth-Moon system including lunar phases, elliptical ...

Session begins by introducing the UW-Rock County Solar Project. As a long-term experiment open to all, with a 6 kW system designed with three differently configured solar PV arrays. Activity example using ...

Opportunity to introduce FTIR and Raman spectroscopy into the undergraduate Geoscience curriculum at all levels at modest cost. We have acquired and used these instruments in introductory and intermediate courses ...

Cream-filled, chocolate sandwich cookies, such as Oreo®, are a popular way to teach students about the phases of the moon, and numerous images and lesson plans are readily available online. However, activities ...

Paired teaching is defined as a model of co-teaching in which the teaching team consists of two or more instructors sharing the planning, delivery, and assessment of instruction, as well as the physical space in ...

As education research suggests, the traditional model of only-lecturing in a large lecture class has given way to active learning strategies, even with class sizes greater than 100. Implementing discussion as an ...

In fall of 2015 we completely reworked our introductory physical geology course for non-majors. Our goals were to: Engage the students more meaningfully with the material. Help students to see the relationships ...

Our goal as geosciences educators is to increase student learning and facilitate positive attitudes towards Earth science. This study measures the effects of a student project in Earth and Environmental Science ...

The main learning objective of the Eastern Michigan University (EMU) course, Introduction to Weather and Forecasting, is to obtain a working knowledge of the development of a weather forecast. Developing a weather ...

An overarching goal of the Master of Education in Earth Sciences program at Penn State University is to expose excellent and enthusiastic teachers to primary scientific research in Earth science so they can master ...

How can we increase the number of Native Americans trained in the Earth and Environmental Sciences? Indigenous peoples are already feeling the effects of a changing climate on lifeways. Tribal leaders want ...

As part of a NOAA-funded project entitled, Policy-Ready Citizen Science, in Year 1 we planned and implemented three weeks of professional development for the teachers in Summer 2015. The first week the teachers met ...

This poster presents evaluation of field-based learning in courses within the Sustainable Community Development program at Stephen F. Austin State University. Course fieldwork includes: citizen restoration of an ...

Critical Zone Observatories (CZOs) study the interactions of rock, soil, air, water, and life in the area between the bottom of the water table and the tops of the vegetation. These National Science ...

Local geological knowledge is usually not highlighted in general geology textbooks that are used in high schools, and thus they do not incorporate hands-on learning opportunities that can engage and inspire new ...

In 2015, a Fall "Freshman Seminar" at Princeton University (http://geoweb.princeton.edu/people/simons/FRS-SESC.html) taught students to combine field observations of the natural world with quantitative ...

The University of Colorado at Boulder Learning Assistant (LA) program has been shown to be very successful in increasing grades and engaging students in large lecture classes, increasing retention in sciences and ...

Students participate in a field trip to a local dammed river and associated lake (Waco Lake, Texas) managed by the Army Corp of Engineers for flood control and the municipal source of water for Waco, Texas. ...

The NSF-funded Earth and Space Science Partnership at Penn State has been designing, conducting and assessing research into student learning of plate tectonics and solar system astronomy (two critical ideas for ...

Field-based courses at the university level are logistically difficult, but an essential part of the learning process in geology. We present a pilot study related to two field trips (Grand Canyon, AZ; Rainbow ...

During the 2015-2016 academic year we began a series of workshops to introduce instructors at El Paso Community College (EPCC) and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) to InTeGrate materials. The workshops ...

In the geosciences, writing is key to describing thoughts, observations, and data to effectively communicate results and interpretations. However, written communication of geological ideas is often a difficult task ...

Sketching is a valuable activity to help students develop spatial skills and understand difficult geoscience concepts. Yet, sketching is rarely implemented at the introductory level due to the time needed to grade ...

We present the results of transitioning laboratory activities in an introductory physical geology course from passive to active learning. It has been shown that student-driven investigation has the capacity to ...

Most geoscientists collect and study physical samples (soil, rock, fossils, drill core, thin sections, water, gas, etc.). However, systems with the ability to link physical samples with digital information, such as ...

We created a series of geoscience videos to support student learning in an introductory physical geology course. We incorporated aspects of effective multimedia design (e.g., brief videos featuring spatial and ...

Public science education is a not just a service industry for the community it can also act as a tool by which graduate students in the field of Earth Science can be trained. The classroom setting is often a ...

An introductory physical geology class at a two-year college has been significantly revised during Spring 2016 by replacing about 50% of the laboratory activities with newly developed InTeGrate activities. By ...

This poster summarizes the results of nine terms of teaching an introductory physical geology course with a poster project that replaces the final exam. The course is intended for students who are not planning to ...

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) describe what students should know and be able to do in the sciences at all levels in the K-12 setting. Our community needs to engage and support educators at state and ...

Presenters will hang their posters by 8:30am (the hall will be open to presenters at 7:30am), and the Poster Hall will be open throughout the day.

A discussion forum intended to span the gap between once-weekly class meetings, and to train students to analyze their own knowledge, yields consistently remarkable discourse. Students participate in the ...

Engaging students in authentic problem solving concerning environmental issues in near surface complex earth systems involves both developing student conceptualization of the earth as a system and applying that ...

For three semesters we conducted a general-education course designed for both undergraduates and seventh-graders in which students investigated contaminant sources and water quality of a local stream. The middle ...

The 100-level Introduction to Meteorology course is a requirement for Natural Sciences and secondary science education majors. It also attracts a significant proportion of non-majors. This seems to be the perfect ...

The important role of spatial thinking in STEM education is established, yet minimally applied to meteorology education and the study of atmospheric sciences. Weather forecasting, involving hand plotting of ...