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-Thursday | Monday-Tuesday | Wednesday-Thursday
4-day: Monday-Thursday
Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences
Conveners: Lisa Gilbert (Cabrillo College), Claire McKinley (Bellevue Community College), Claire McLeod (Miami University, Oxford), Mintesinot Jiru (Coppin State University), Becki Beadling (Temple University), Lynsey LeMay (Virginia Peninsula Community College), Christy Visaggi (Georgia State University), and Sue Ebanks (Savannah State University)
Securing a position and being successful in academia can seem daunting. Further, the universe of academic career options in the geosciences looks overwhelming. The Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences workshop has been designed to confront these concerns and discuss tips, strategies, and coping mechanisms for success in teaching and research in academia from a variety of geoscience professionals at a range of institutions. What kind of institution is right for you? How can you craft the strongest research and teaching statements to land an interview? What does it take to get your first grant? What does it take to succeed as a teacher? How do you stay focused and keep your lab and classes motivated so you can meet criteria for tenure? The workshop will provide a stimulating and resource-rich environment in which to explore these kinds of questions and other important facets of an academic career. Faculty members and administrators will provide guidance and information that will help participants to be stronger candidates for academic positions and to succeed in academic jobs. Session topics focus on becoming both a successful teacher and researcher. Each participant will develop or revise a plan for the next career stage and will take home ideas to improve teaching immediately.
Designing Activities to Engage Students and Enhance Learning in Quantitatively Challenging Geoscience Content
Conveners: Casey Davenport (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), Lauren Burns (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), Zachary Handlos (Georgia Institute of Technology), John Knox (University of Georgia)
Across the geosciences, math is used to represent physical processes within the Earth system. However, students routinely struggle to make connections between equations and real-world applications; this is often a function of multiple issues, including math phobia, varying levels of preparation with extra-departmental prerequisite courses, and challenges in understanding the underlying physical process. These challenges can make it difficult to teach geoscience courses with quantitative content and ensure students are supported for long-term learning and success. Notably, while substantial science education research has demonstrated that students are most engaged and learn more effectively within courses that incorporate active learning exercises, traditional lecture still dominates geoscience instruction. Building upon recent workshops that focused on improving student engagement and learning in quantitatively-intensive geoscience courses and the strong interest in having tangible teaching resources, this workshop benefits instructors teaching any course or specific topic that is quantitatively challenging for students. Participant outcomes include the following: 1) design, within disciplinary and/or course-specific groups, one or more active learning exercise(s) or activity(ies) designed to tackle a quantitatively challenging topic, 2) lead the workshop in participation of the designed activity(ies), and 3) share the designed active learning activity(ies) within an online repository to be shared with the broader community. To the extent possible, groups will also be sorted based on course enrollment size and/or course level, as execution of active learning exercises will necessarily be different with varying numbers of students and varying levels of student preparation.
2-day: Monday-Tuesday
Unlocking the Potential of your Introductory Geoscience Course
Conveners: Anne Egger (Central Washington University), Natalie Bursztyn (The University of Montana-Missoula), and Angela Daneshmand (Santiago Canyon College)
Introductory geoscience courses at the undergraduate level have the potential to be profound experiences in which students are engaged actively in scientific practices and critical thinking, deepen their science literacy, and develop their identities as scientists. How can we unlock that potential? In this workshop, we will share results from our curriculum development project focused on engaging students in the practices of science in a learning environment where all students feel they can contribute. Participants will have the opportunity to explore new curricular materials, engage in discussions about the challenges and opportunities of introductory courses, and develop action plans for making changes to their own courses. We encourage participation from groups of instructors and instructor-teaching assistant pairs from the same institution.
Beyond the Breaking News: Using land surface hazard data to teach earth systems connections to intro geoscience students
Conveners: Megan Plenge (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Beth Pratt-Sitaula (EarthScope), and Eric Kirby (Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus)
Natural hazard case studies engage introductory geoscience students by highlighting the real-world impacts of geoscience knowledge and the societal relevance of developing geoscience skills. Creating introductory lesson plans about local recent events can be challenging as multiple land surface hazards coexist and existing textbooks often treat land surface hazards in isolation. For example, hurricanes trigger landslide events and debris flows that then alter rivers and lead to changes in flooding hazard. Highlighting the interconnected nature of Earth surface hazards can help students understand systems interactions and the need for a comprehensive disaster preparedness and emergency response plan when examining societal impacts of hazards. The Center for Land Surface Hazards (CLaSH) focuses on the cumulative impacts of cascading hazards and is building a community of 2YC instructors with capacity to teach geoscience skills and systems thinking to the next generation of geoscientists and emergency management professionals. In this workshop, we will provide examples of land surface hazards case studies appropriate for introductory classes. Then participants will work in teams to modify existing lessons to highlight systems interactions and incorporate relevant, place-based data. We hope to establish a network of 2YC and other introductory geoscience educators who are interested in receiving further training in cascading land surface hazards and creating teaching resources that help students recognize geoscience connections to their communities and can be adapted to specific issues in different regions.
Integrating Teamwork Skills as Explicit Pedagogical Strategy
Conveners: Stacy Yager and Samuel Nyarko (Indiana University-Indianapolis)
The purpose of this workshop is to describe and discuss how to effectively implement teamwork process skills in collaborative field, laboratory, and/or classroom groups. Teamwork is considered an essential learning and workforce skill that capitalizes on the strengths and expertise of others to address complex scientific problems. According to the vision and change policy supporting the future of undergraduate geoscience education, students "must learn to be a leader and a follower, to listen and share, and to work with people who have different opinions and approaches". However, in many geoscience courses, teamwork is thought of as one of the "soft skills" which students learn alongside content knowledge. This workshop aims to provide participants with an understanding of team science, associated process skills, and creating and implementing modules around teamwork skills.
We will engage in activities that will help participants gain understanding of teamwork process skills as a teaching and learning tool including (1) variety of case scenarios for participants to work together and experience how roles structure teamwork, making it easier to guide students in assigning and rotating roles, (2) work in groups to choose a topic from their own subject area and outline a short teamwork-based learning activity, and (3) reflect on what went well and critical challenges of teamwork implementation and assessment. Participants will leave the workshop with tangible and actionable ways to adopt and adapt the teamwork process skills modules and resources, and ways to connect with the community beyond the workshop.
Fun with Earth and Space Science for All Students!
Conveners: Cassandra Runyon (College of Charleston), Betty Jo Moore (NC Space Grant Consortium), Maria Royle (SC Space Grant Consortium), and Molly Bloom (SC Department of Juvenile Justice)
The overall goal of this workshop is to share adaptive teaching strategies in support of different learning modalities in Earth and Space STEM lessons and activities for both K-12 and informal education settings. Participants will learn about and work through NASA-related activities while simulating a 'model student' that they may have in their education setting. Participants don a variety of simulators as they work through the activities and determine how it may be adapted for the best experience for their 'model student'. Simulators used include those for visual impairment, hearing impairment, mobility and more. Following each activity participants discuss their respective challenges and potential adaptations to the activities.
Writing Retreat
Convener: Caitlin Callahan (Grand Valley State University)
The design of this retreat uses Lave and Wenger's (1991) community of practice theory to create a structured retreat for sustained writing. Participants will engage in dedicated writing time with the purpose of progressing with writing projects in a supportive and collegial environment. The writing retreat will provide participants with a distraction free setting to write and the opportunity to speak to and seek feedback from other writers. Participants should arrive with a writing project in mind and a strong desire to significantly move the project forward within the time allotted by the retreat.
Note this workshop is also offered Wednesday-Thursday. Participants may register for one or both offerings.
2-day: Wednesday-Thursday
Instructional Design: How to write an elearning tutorial style quiz to advance scientific computing in your classroom
Conveners: Gillian B Haberli and Tammy Bravo (EarthScope)
This workshop empowers STEM educators to create tutorial-style quizzes that simultaneously teach and assess scientific computing skills. While computational thinking is essential across disciplines, many instructors struggle to integrate these skills without overwhelming students or without having developed the skills themselves. Our workshop addresses this challenge through the innovative use of tutorial style instructional quizzes that break down computational concepts into manageable, scaffolded learning experiences. Participants will engage in a highly interactive experience including: Hands-on exploration of exemplar computational quizzes, Guided identification of "computational moments" in their existing courses, Collaborative development of learning objectives and assessment strategies, Building their own tutorial style quiz in an LMS, Peer testing and feedback sessions, Data-driven refinement of questions, Implementation planning for their specific teaching contexts. This workshop bridges pedagogical theory with practical application. Participants will leave with ready-to-use tutorial style quizzes, enhanced technical skills, and strategies to progressively build student computational confidence.
Theories of Change and Logic Models
Convener: Ellen Iverson (Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College)
Increasingly theories of change are expected to be a central component articulated within education research grant proposals and manuscripts. At the end of this short workshop, participants will be able to distinguish between logic models, theories of change, and theories of action; use program theory to construct and/or improve these models; and increase their awareness of additional related resources. Logic models, program theory, theories of change, and theories of action are useful tools for clarifying relationships between education research questions, intervention activities (such as new classroom practices), and assessment strategies. Workshop participants will examine example models and discuss opportunities for using these models and how each relate to theories of change. In small groups participants will discuss and begin to develop one of their own models that relates to an education research investigation of interest to them.
Climate in your own backyard and DataWISE
Conveners: Amanda Townley, Wendy Johnson, and Britt Miller (National Center for Science Education (NCSE))
Day One: The National Center for Science Education has created lessons that are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to teach about evolution, climate change, and the nature of science. In this session, teachers will be introduced to five Climate Change Story Shorts, which is a new and innovative method for creating three-dimensional storylines. This approach was developed after conducting a two-year curriculum field study with middle and high school science teachers. The Story Short format is a concise storyline that can be completed in as little as five class periods, or expanded with optional Side Quest activities. All the materials, including detailed lesson plans, student handouts, slides, and resources, are freely available to teachers online. During this session, teachers will get hands-on experience with one or two selected activities and will learn how to access all the resources online for future use.
Day Two: The DataWISE tool combines key principles and practices gathered from research-based strategies in media literacy and data analysis into one easy-to-use tool with added attention given to the ways that data can be co-opted or misrepresented. When considering a claim presented with accompanying data, students will ask themselves a series of questions to judge the authority, purpose, presentation, and sensibility of the claim and evidence using the WISE acronym. They start with questions that allow them to determine whether the claim is Worthy of their attention, Inspect the data, ask if the interpretation of the data and the conclusions make Sense, and pay close attention to the Emotions elicited by the claim and data presented. With continued practice, students should eventually be able to internalize these questions and use this method to critically evaluate any data-based claim presented to them in person, print, or digital formats.
Evaluating Sources and Claims About Socioscientific Issues in the Earth and Environmental Sciences
Convener: Carla McAuliffe (IGES)
The goal of our project and this workshop (https://serc.carleton.edu/mel/index.html) is to promote students' civic and scientific evaluations of sources and alternative claims when confronted with controversial and/or complex socioscientific issues (SSIs) in the Earth and environmental sciences. Given the current challenge of combating misinformation and disinformation about SSIs, these skills are important to address. Project activities support student exploration of a range of socioscientific issues from climate change to extreme weather to freshwater availability to food security and many others (https://serc.carleton.edu/mel/teaching_resources/index.html). We developed two complimentary instructional scaffolds: 1) Lateral Reading (LR) scaffolds focused on source evaluation and 2) Model Evidence Link (MEL) scaffolds focused on evaluating connections between lines of evidence and alternative explanatory claims. We have also developed a Reasoning About SocioScientific Issues (RASSI) instrument to assess individuals' knowledge, reasoning, and confidence when engaging with scientific claims on socially relevant topics. This instrument may be of interest to geoscience education researchers as well as educators evaluating their students' understanding. In addition, the project website provides multiple digital resources to support the teaching of these issues. Workshop participants will experience LR and MEL activities, discussing in groups as their students would. They will share their prior experiences of similar strategies they have used in their teaching. They will examine student data and assess their explanations as well as explore digital resources. All activities are available on the MEL-LR project website and available for immediate classroom implementation.
Writing Retreat
Conveners: Caitlin Callahan (Grand Valley State University)
The design of this retreat uses Lave and Wenger's (1991) community of practice theory to create a structured retreat for sustained writing. Participants will engage in dedicated writing time with the purpose of progressing with writing projects in a supportive and collegial environment. The writing retreat will provide participants with a distraction free setting to write and the opportunity to speak to and seek feedback from other writers. Participants should arrive with a writing project in mind and a strong desire to significantly move the project forward within the time allotted by the retreat.
Note this workshop is also offered Monday-Tuesday. Participants may register for one or both offerings.