Afternoon Mini Workshops
Afternoon mini-workshops are open to all participants registered for that day (not reserved ahead of time). Join the email list to receive updates.
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Monday
LGBTQ+ Representation in the Geosciences... Showing Our Students That They Belong!
Conveners: Alicia Mullens (De Anza College)
The Geosciences, and science in general, has not always been the most approachable professional and academic field for members of marginalized communities to get started in. Despite the recent increase in visibility and acceptance, members of the LGBTQ+ community still fall within this category, and are still in need of support and a sense of belonging in the Geosciences. This workshop will seek to provide demonstrations and ideas to participants on how schools across the United States have made their Geoscience classrooms a more inviting and welcoming space for the LGBTQ+ community. The workshop will also make space for participants to share their experiences, both positive and negative, about supporting the LGBTQ+ community in their classes.
Guiding Students to Use Evidence to Support their Scientific Reasoning
Convener: Kathy Browne (Rider University), Andrea Drewes (Rider University), Gabriela Smalley (Rider University), Sage Lichtenwalner (Rutgers University-New Brunswick)
Scientific reasoning is complex and many of us have experienced our students struggling to excel in this skill. In this interactive workshop, participants will be introduced to an instructional framework that our research project has tested to help improve undergraduate students' reasoning through a connection with data literacy skills. We will share and explore online interactive data visualizations of oceanographic data, lesson plans and an assessment rubric.
Exploring Earth's Surface Through Remote Sensing
Conveners: Elizabeth Joyner (NASA), Michael Taylor (NASA)
This hands-on mini-workshop introduces participants to the exciting world of remote sensing for studying Earth's surface. We will guide participants through remote sensing, from understanding the fundamental principles behind remote sensing within NASA's Earth Science Directorate, to actively collecting and analyzing data, and finally accessing Landsat data for Temple University's location to analyze. This fun and hands-on session has something for everyone.
The Wow Factor: Cutting Rocks to Engage Students
Conveners: Kyle Fredrick (Pennsylvania Western University - California), Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim (Front Range Community College), Daniel Harris (Pennsylvania Western University - California)
Many of our students, including non-majors already bring an interest in rocks, crystals, or gems to their introductory-level geoscience classes. But traditional geology labs tend to focus on rock and mineral identification, without emphasizing what draws students to them in the first place. By incorporating a relatively inexpensive rock saw and standard safety protocols into your geology class, it is possible to build engaging labs that leverage students childhood wonder to explore minerals' crystal form and hardness, and mineral composition of rocks. We'll demonstrate rock-cutting with standard, low-cost lapidary saws, and we ask participants to bring their own samples to see what's inside! Safety goggles will be provided. Also, bear in mind that rock-saws can be wet and dirty, so prepare with that in mind.
Improving Food-Energy-Water-Nexus-based Education: Defining new research directions from problems of practice
Conveners: Hannah Scherer (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Doug Lombardi (University of Maryland-College Park), Shondricka Burrell (Morgan State University)
The Food-Energy-Water (FEW)-Nexus framework is used to describe and aid in addressing natural resource challenges in complex coupled human-natural systems. As this framework gains traction in informal, non-formal, K-12, and higher education spaces, educators see the potential of the FEW-Nexus to prompt systems thinking and interdisciplinary problem-solving. This workshop will bring together educators who are (or would like to be) engaged in FEW-Nexus-based education with geoscience education researchers to share expertise and define new priority areas for education research in support of FEW-Nexus-based education. Participants will gain new insights into FEW-Nexus-based education to inform their own education or research practice, with opportunities for continued engagement with the National Collaborative for Research on Food, Energy, and Water Education (NC-FEW; https://serc.carleton.edu/nc-few) beyond the workshop.
CANCELLED - Teaching Environmental Justice Through Geoscience
Conveners: Gary Gomby (Central Connecticut State University)
Due to circumstances beyond our control, this workshop has been cancelled.
Wednesday
Environmental Ethics: Theory and Practice
Conveners: Jeffrey Spike (George Washington University School of Medicine) and Elizabeth Spike (Clean Air Partners)
Students are not only interested but motivated by the ethical dimension of environmental science. Instructors should use that motivation in their courses rather than send a message that ethics is excluded from the course because it isn't science. The session builds capacity in instructors in their ability to address the ethical issues in complex environmental problems with a presentation followed by small and large group discussions. Participants will learn how to introduce environmental ethics as a driver of content and skills in their science teaching. Participants will engage with a brief exercise to reflect on their current pedagogy and educational beliefs. Participants will then explore the four environmental ethical principles of Precautionary Principle, Biodiversity, Environmental Justice, and Sustainability through interactive slides and handouts. Specifically, the session will compare the four environmental ethical principles to biomedical and public health ethical principles used in medical schools and schools of public health. The short term outcome is for instructors to become comfortable introducing the environmental ethical principles into their teaching. The long term outcome is for students to make better reasoned and more ethical decisions about managing our natural resources and protecting human health using the four environmental ethical principles.
Sustainability: Intentional integration
Convener: Jennifer Cholnoky, (Skidmore College) and Mary Abercrombie (Florida Gulf Coast University)
In this workshop, we will investigate the many faceted connections between sustainability and the geosciences. Within breakout groups, we will explore strategies for integrating sustainability concepts into our teaching based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals as well as other tools. We will wrap up with a share out of participants' ideas with the goal that you will each leave with some applicable and actionable tools to implement in your teaching.
Facilitating Effective Group Projects in Geoscience Courses
Convener: Sasha Seroy (University of Washington-Seattle Campus) and Dana Thomas (University of Texas at Austin)
This workshop will explore effective ways to facilitate group projects to promote the development of workforce skills for students. We will provide an overview of the benefits of group projects for geoscience students, introduce example group project models from the leaders' experiences and discuss how to incorporate group projects into a course plan or learning experience. We will discuss tools and strategies that can be provided to students for structuring and assessing their own project progress and outcomes, as well as models for assessing group projects for grading purposes. Through this, we will focus on how to integrate skill development within course structure including project planning, management, communication and leadership. Participants will come away with tools to use in their existing group project teaching or outline new implementations for their own courses. This workshop is directly applicable for those who teach smaller classes at the undergraduate and graduate level, though K-12 teachers and informal educators and professionals are most welcome.
H5P Activities for Summative and Formative Assessment in Online and Web-Enhanced Courses
Convener: Allison Jones (Sierra College)
Participants will learn about the H5P interactive activity tool, how to find existing and develop their own free interactive H5P activities, how to embed H5P as formative assessments in Canvas LMS pages (or other LMS), and how to leverage H5P as summative assessments using LibreText's ADAPT homework systems. We will discuss which H5P are fully accessible and which can be made accessible with workarounds. Participants will leave the workshop with H5P as a valuable assessment tool in their educator toolkit. Participants will need to bring a computer and be connected to the internet.
Pedagogies and Practices for Boosting Spatial Understanding of Fluid Earth
Conveners: Peggy McNeal (Towson University), Tim Shipley (Temple University), Heather Petcovic (Western Michigan University)
Thinking and learning about fluid-Earth processes can be uniquely challenging for students. This workshop targets instructors of fluid-Earth science courses including meteorology, oceanography, hydrology, hydrogeology, and environmental science. After introducing participants to visuospatial challenges and misconceptions uncovered during investigations of student sensemaking of fluid behavior, we will collaborate and brainstorm hands-on activities for scaffolding student understanding. We plan to make use of multiple models of fluid-Earth processes including groundwater models, density tanks, rotating tanks, stream tables and flumes.
Thursday
Developing Dispositions to Help Students Succeed in the Workforce
Conveners: Karen Viskupic (Boise State University), Greg Shafer (Boise State University), Kaelyn Lagerwall (Boise State University), Anne Egger (Central Washington University)
Recent work by Shafer et al. (2023, Geosphere; and unpublished employer interview data) identified dispositions that employers of entry-level geoscientists are seeking. Such dispositions include a desire to learn, initiative, positive attitude, attention to detail, and professionalism. In this workshop we will explore strategies for explicitly helping students to recognize and develop these dispositions such as reflection assignments, self-assessments, discussions of examples and non-examples, and personal development plans.
On the Air: Exploring air pollution sources
Convener: Elizabeth Spike (Clean Air Partners), Alexander Hume Spike, Air Alliance Houston
Air quality is less familiar to the general public, resulting in a deficit of air quality lessons compared to water and soil within K-12 science education. On the Air overcomes this barrier to environmental literacy and intergenerational equity with interactive skills-based transdisciplinary STEM activities that apply environmental justice and authentic engagement to solve real world problems faced by vulnerable populations. On the Air's 5E student-centered inquiry activities focus on ozone, particulates, and climate within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The activities align with Next Generation Science Standards and prioritize skill building to transform awareness of air pollution into action to protect our resources and quality of life. On the Air is free and online. Locally, it uses a train-the-trainer model to build capacity in science teachers who teach their colleagues how to deliver air quality and climate change education to their students.
Workshop attendees will learn how to navigate On the Air website and other related air quality and climate resources, deliver activities using best practices to bridge science and public health to air and climate action, and become more familiar with the train-the-trainer model and how it can expand air quality education
Making Sense of Your Course Evaluations
Convener: Cody Kirkpatrick (Indiana University-Bloomington)
Student evaluations of teaching remain one of the most used – and misused – components of our teaching portfolios. These evaluations are often given substantial weight by administrators in promotion and merit reviews, even with their numerous known biases. As long as student evaluations remain one of the factors that exert influence on our careers, how to use their data to our advantage in demonstrating teaching effectiveness remains needed.
The workshop is intended for any faculty member or graduate student who receives student evaluation feedback on their teaching. Attendees are encouraged to bring a set of student evaluations from one of their recent courses to reflect on and work with – but no pressure, you will not be expected to share with other attendees if you do not wish to do so.
Conducting Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in Your Courses
Convener: Karen Kortz (Community College of Rhode Island)
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is the systematic study by instructors of the impact of their teaching on student learning and the sharing of results (e.g. through discussions, department meetings, presentations, and publications). In this workshop, we will discuss the basic steps involved in a SoTL project, identify different types of research questions to answer, and compare strategies of SoTL study design and data collection. Participants will brainstorm ideas, receive feedback, and leave the workshop with their own research questions and an initial plan to answer them.
Soil Science: Bridging Geology and Environmental Science in a Sustainable World
Conveners: Michelle Cauley (Dakota College)
The study of soils, soil health, and soil's impact on our climate is paramount in our ever-changing educational landscape. In this workshop, participants will be exploring the connection that soils have in our geology and environmental science worlds through hands-on investigations. Participants will explore how world geology impacts soils and how soil health impacts climate, agriculture, and groundwater systems. In this workshop, participants will gain a deeper level of knowledge about geology through hands-on experiments and will leave with lessons and resources to adapt to their own learner's needs.