Workshops
The morning workshop program is open for registration. Workshop size is limited based on room capacity, and space is reserved on a first come, first serve basis.
Jump to: Monday-Wednesday | Thursday-Friday
Monday-Wednesday
Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences
Conveners: Sue Ebanks (Savannah State University), Lisa Gilbert (Cabrillo College), Lynsey LeMay (Virginia Peninsula Community College), Brendan Hanger (Colorado School of Mines), Gary Weissmann (University of New Mexico)
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 from a variety of institution types and career paths will provide guidance and information that will help participants to be stronger candidates for academic positions and to succeed in academic jobs. Each participant will develop or revise a plan for their next career stage and will take home ideas that they can implement immediately. Informal discussions and one-on-one mentoring are available during lunch and afternoons. Participants will re-join the group for peer review of application materials on Monday and Tuesday evenings. Additional professional development is available through the afternoon workshops, panels, and plenary sessions that are part of the Earth Educators' Rendezvous.
Beyond your Classroom: Building effective Geoscience activities for improved student learning with a teacher audience in mind
Conveners: Kyle Fredrick, California University of Pennsylvania and Heather Goss, American Geophysical Union
Participants will be introduced to the Teach the Earth (TTE) portal to find existing resources to adopt or adapt for their own classrooms. Attendees will develop their own activity and work through the Teach the Earth submission process, with the goal of creating a robust activity to make it through the TTE peer-review process with an "Exemplary" score. We will use the ENGAGE resource at Eos: Science News by AGU, designed to help educators improve science literacy and science news consumption for their students, to establish a collaborative workflow using timely, topical geoscience to formulate new activity ideas. This workshop is designed for teachers of all levels and experience.
How is your Program Helping Students Prepare for the Jobs They Want?
Conveners: Anne Egger (Central Washington University) and Karen Viskupic (Boise State University)
In this workshop, we will help you make more explicit connections between the skills you are building in your geoscience programs and the skills that geoscience employers (and graduate schools) are seeking. You will explore strategies to help prepare students for the workforce including designing curricula that allow students to practice in-demand skills for bachelors-level geoscientists, helping students recognize and reflect on the skills they are practicing, and guiding students' exploration of possible careers and further education.
Teaching Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics with Interactive Demonstrations
Conveners: Jon Aurnou (UCLA), Spencer Hill (Columbia University), Alex Gonzalez (Iowa State University), Jordyn Moscoso (UCLA), Kaylie Cohanim (Princeton University), Indrani Ganguly (Iowa State University), Rodrigo Rodakoviski (University of California-Los Angeles)
Weather, ocean, and climate processes are often notoriously difficult for students and educators to conceptualize. In this three-day workshop, participants will gain knowledge using simple experiments to create vivid table-top models of these geophysical systems with our Do-It-Yourself dynamics (DIYnamics) kits. Workshop attendees will learn how to use our system via the "see one, do one, teach one" pedagogical method through a mixture of brief presentations, hands-on demonstrations, and interactive discussions. We will focus on material to effectively teach Coriolis accelerations and energy flow through the earth system. At the end of our workshop, each participant will get to take home the DIYnamics kit that they built.
Applied Geoscience Education: Engaging with society for sustainability
Conveners: Jeffrey Greenberg (Wheaton College (IL)), Gregory Wessel (Geology in the Public Interest), Ellen Metzger (San Jose State University)
Workshop participants will discuss and share their current approaches to applied geosciences education, explore materials from the SERC InTeGrate Project and other sources, and develop an action plan for including student-centered explorations of the geoscience-society interface in their instruction. Participants will also learn about organizations, including the Global Network for Geoscience and Society, that seek to strengthen cooperation and catalyze actions to support the global geoscience community in working with others around the world to foster resilience and sustainability.
Thursday-Friday
Getting the Most Out of your Teaching Assistant (TA) Experience
Conveners: Anne Egger (Central Washington University), Karen Viskupic (Boise State University), Katherine Ryker (University of South Carolina-Columbia), with contributions fromBeth Pratt-Sitaula (UNAVCO), Becca Walker (Mt. San Antonio College)
In this workshop, we will help graduate students build their skills as teaching assistants (TAs) and articulate those skills in light of future careers. Participants will develop skills and confidence for facilitating data-rich learning activities, explore strategies for fostering inclusive and supportive learning environments, and recognize and communicate the important skills they develop as a TA. While the primary audience for the workshop is graduate students, senior undergraduates, post-docs, and faculty interested in providing professional development for TAs are also welcome.
Case Studies and Discourse Analysis in Qualitative Geoscience Education Research
Conveners: Larry Collins (Longwood University) and Samuel Nyarko (Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis)
The goal of this workshop is to identify the types of research problems/questions that can be answered within qualitative education research frameworks. The primary focus will be on evaluating how decisions are made to identify a qualitative research design. We will specifically learn about the two major qualitative case study designs (single and multiple case), their differences, and the use of critical discourse analysis in these designs. The hope is that the workshop will be a time for us to share our work with one another and receive
advice and feedback on our projects.
Teaching Quantitative Reasoning with Real Data – The EDDIE Way!
Conveners: Christopher Berg (Orange Coast College) and Dax Soule (CUNY Queens College)
Please join us as we introduce you to the Project EDDIE resource collection – the results of an NSF-funded effort to create flexible classroom modules that aim to expose students to real-world data and practice critical analysis and quantitative reasoning skills. The collection of modules includes a variety of topics in ecology, earth and environmental sciences and is freely available online. This two-day workshop will include short presentations of EDDIE materials, discussions of the common elements of structure of all EDDIE materials and the benefits of teaching with data on student learning, opportunities to freely explore the EDDIE collection, and time to consider revisions and adaptations to modules that are appropriate for participants' courses; our goal is that participants will leave with an action plan to adapt a module for their use in a new or existing course.
Connecting with the Environment through Nature Journaling
Convener: Barbra Sobhani (University of Colorado at Boulder)
This workshop will guide participants through the process of incorporating nature journaling into their curriculum. We will discuss ways to blend reflective writing, field notetaking and sketching to enhance student learning. We will also be putting in the pencil miles, practicing sketching techniques for all types of natural subjects. No prior art background is required. By the end of the workshop, participants will have developed a plan for incorporating this practice into their own work and courses. We will learn basic art skills and approaches to a variety of subjects, engage in reflective writing, and data collection to create a series of journaling pages.
Teaching with Geochemical Data: A collaborative workshop to identify barriers and find solutions
Conveners: Karin A Block-Cora (The City College of New York) and Hannah Adrienne Sweets (LDEO-Columbia University)
Students frequently struggle when working with data. Handling geochemical data can be especially daunting as it requires knowledge of stoichiometry, magma composition, and the physical processes that influence element partitioning and chemical fluxes. The goal of this workshop is to collaboratively brainstorm and share techniques and activities to help students learn how to work with research-grade data to obtain information about igneous processes. Participants will be introduced to the EarthChem portal and its member databases and work together to produce a suite of teaching activities to be shared via the Teach the Earth portal.
Designing Student-centered Activities to Increase Engagement and Learning within Atmospheric Dynamics Courses
Conveners: Casey Davenport (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), Zachary Handlos (Georgia Institute of Technology), John Knox (University of Georgia)
The goal of this 2-day workshop is to provide participants an opportunity to develop their own hands-on, student-centered (i.e., active learning) dynamics activity that participants can then readily use within their own courses (e.g. atmospheric dynamics, synoptic meteorology, mesoscale meteorology, related courses) to improve student engagement and understanding of atmospheric dynamics course material. The first day of the workshop will provide participants with information about the benefits of student-centered learning, the challenges of teaching atmospheric dynamics concepts and a plan to allow work time to develop a student-centered activity. The second day of the workshop will allow participants an opportunity to continue to work on finalizing their activities and then conclude with demonstrating their activity for the entire workshop as well as learn from other participants' developed activities from the previous day.