Four Years of Discovery Improvements for SERC website visitors
Sean Fox, Carleton College; mahdi mohamed, Carleton College; Monica Bruckner, Carleton College; Ashley Carlson, Carleton College; Cailin Huyck Orr, Carleton College; Ellen Iverson, Carleton College; John McDaris, Carleton College; Kristin O'Connell, Carleton College
The Science Education Resource Center (SERC) hosts materials from more than 120 geoscience education projects. However, the project-focused nature of the SERC website means that information is siloed which presents ...

Exploring Earth's Dynamic Systems
catherine etter, Cape Cod Community College
The Earth's Dynamic Systems Lab aims to illustrate the interconnectedness of Earth's systems by depicting global and local climate change variables, biogeochemical cycles, and natural versus ...

The effect of Spatial Anxiety on training spatial reasoning
Katharine Johanesen, Juniata College; Territa Poole, Juniata College; Katherine Ryker, University of South Carolina-Columbia
Spatial reasoning skills are an important component of student development in geoscience. While ability levels vary between individuals, these skills are trainable. Recently, Spatial Anxiety has been recognized as ...

Cultivating GeoSTEM Learning Ecosystems
Cheryl Manning, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Geo-STEM learning ecosystems (GLEs) are complex and evolving communities of practice. By integrating geoscience, STEM education, and social science research paradigms, GLEs engage people in addressing local ...

Effects of role playing as an active learning strategy on student sense of classroom community and STEM Identity
Alexa Tomlinson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Wayana Dolan, UNC Chapel Hill; Bryant Hutson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Megan Plenge, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Fostering a sense of classroom community in introductory geoscience classes can support students' sense of belonging, help students feel like part of the broader scientific community, and help them build a ...

Improving Food-Energy-Water-Nexus-based Education: Defining new research directions from problems of practice
Hannah Scherer, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ; Doug Lombardi, University of Maryland-College Park; Shondricka Burrell, Morgan State University
The Food-Energy-Water (FEW)-Nexus framework helps describe and address natural resource challenges in complex coupled human-natural systems. As this framework gains traction in informal, non-formal, K-12, and ...

Geology, Society, and Justice: An undergraduate and graduate level place-based geoscience class to recenter land justice in geoscience education
Cameron Reed, University of New Mexico-Main Campus; Lindsay Worthington, University of New Mexico-Main Campus; Steven Semken, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Jennifer Richter, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
Geoscience education has long been guided by formulaic objective truth-seeking and methodologies inherited from centuries of practice rooted in the Western worldview that continues to permeate and shape the role of ...

Analyzing Student Reasoning Around Socioscientific Issues
Carla McAuliffe, IGES
For the past decade the Model-Evidence Link (MEL) project has studied student reasoning around socioscientific issues including climate change, extreme weather, and the use and availability of natural resources. We ...

Guiding students to use evidence to support their scientific reasoning: Research Results
Kathy Browne, Rider University; Gabriela Smalley, Rider University; Andrea Drewes, 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. With NSF funding, we have been testing a strategy built into general education introductory ...

Characterizing the Growth in Spatial Thinking Skills in Undergraduate Meteorology Students Across the Curriculum
Lauren Burns, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Casey Davenport, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Spatial thinking skills are essential to student success in disciplines such as geology, atmospheric science, and geography. Previous work on spatial thinking in the atmospheric sciences has demonstrated that ...