Not Invented Here

There appears to be an expectation (or perception) that undergraduate faculty should be designing their own teaching activities to receive academic credit for their instructional efforts. This has resulted in the "not invented here" syndrome, which places little value on implementation of existing instructional activities in favor of development of new instructional activities. This is a rather strange value system in that a) few undergraduate faculty have formal training in curriculum design, aspects of human cognition related to learning, and assessment, b) undergraduate faculty are typically pressed for time as they attempt to meet their instructional, research and service obligations, and c) we all teach "out of field", and it is very difficult to assemble the relevant Science and accompanying instructional resources from diverse, credentialed sources. "Reinventing the wheel" for the sake of local branding of instructional products is both an inefficient and ineffective use of precious faculty time.

Anecdotal conversations with NSF program officers in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Division of Undergraduate Education have recognized that the "not invented here" syndrome is an impediment to broad dissemination of tested instructional resources and practices. Indeed, the evolution of the NSF/DUE Course Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program over the past decade has changed its focus from innovation a decade ago to include additional emphases on implementation and assessment in the more recent Requests for Proposals to this program. It was the case that "innovation" proposed by many projects was simply implementation of a tested method or activity in a new instructional setting. Unlike teachers in K-12 education that enjoy a culture of sharing and adopting quality instructional resources from trusted sources, undergraduate faculty have traditionally not adopted wholesale existing instructional resources, but rather, have either adapted existing resources to their own instructional priorities or created altogether new resources at a considerable cost of time and effort.

However, the culture of sharing resources appears to be infiltrating the ranks of undergraduate education. The seminal idea of electronic clearinghouses of instructional materials was articulated over a decade ago in the NSF report Shaping the Future, New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology (NSF 96-139; Mogk and Zia, 1997). This nascent idea evolved into educational digital libraries such as the National Science Digital Library, DLESE, and Teach the Earth. Surveys of faculty at that time called for easy access to high quality and peer-reviewed instructional materials, teaching tips, and access to data and data products for instruction (e.g. Shaping the Future of Undergraduate Earth Science Education: Innovation and Change Using an Earth System Approach, Ireton et al., 1997). The DLESE Community Plan (Manduca and Mogk, 2000) articulated the ethic of "users as contributors" to on-line collections of teaching resources. The mantra "give a little, take a lot" recognized that every instructor has one or two really good activities that they've developed, and if everyone contributed just one or two good activities that we would collectively build a really powerful library of resources. It was also recognized that most of us are teaching "out of field" most of the time, even within our chosen sub-discipline; there was an identified need to encourage experts in each area to share their expertise so that all could benefit from the confidence that the scientific content and approaches were valid.

Peer-review and testing of these instructional resources was a high priority. Kastens (2005, JGE v. 53 #1, p. 37-43) developed a community review system (based on scientific veracity, pedagogic effectiveness, and robustness of the resource--it was tested and worked reliably) and also developed annotation systems to document teaching effectiveness (Kastens and Holzman, 2006).

At Teach the Earth, by creating "ActivitySheets" (i.e. educational metadata) we have worked very hard to place instructional activities in their full context of use, including targeted audience, learning goals of the activity, prior knowledge required, materials required, recommended assessments, and links to related resources (see: Fox et al., 2005; Manduca et al, 2005 and Manduca et al., 2006). Tremendous value is added to individual teaching resources when they are authored by experts, placed in their full instructional context, supported by close links to related resources, and have undergone some sort of peer review or received annotations that document the effectiveness of the activity in different class settings.

In geoscience education, community contributions of instructional resources for universal use seems to have been a tremendous success. We collectively enjoy ready access to extensive, robust, and tested instructional resources. Volunteered contributions continue to be submitted, sometimes as individual ad hoc contributions, but often in response to requests submitted to focus group listservs or from dedicated events such as On the Cutting Edge workshops for geoscience faculty professional development.

So, I wonder if this past decade of development of digital instructional resources has rendered the "not invented here" syndrome irrelevant and moot? I can't conceive of the time it would have taken me to put together these many instructional resources.In my own teaching of mineralogy and petrology. Given that I can trust the source and content of these resources, this has really given me the latitude and liberty to spend more time on one-on-one instruction with students, and to better observe barriers and gains to learning. Consequently, I am eternally grateful to:

• John Winter for making the illustrations in his Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology textbook available via PowerPoints keyed to each chapter. (Why should everyone teaching petrology take the time to individually scan each figure and embed in their own Powerpoints?)
• Dex Perkins for sharing freely of his problem sets on phase equilibria (that are tested and work, with solution sets!), and for working with John Brady to develop animated phase diagrams that clearly demonstrate how the phase rule and lever rule work.
• Jane Selverstone, for reducing mineral optics to three easy lessons (with slices through fruit and vegetables to show how the shape and orientation of the indicatrix changes!), and for providing a simple Excel spreadsheet for students to easily calculate P and T of mineral assemblages using the garnet-biotite thermometer and GASP barometer.
• The SERC staff for putting together the Visualization Collections that provide the raw materials for my next lecture (an hour from now!)(See: Teaching With Visualizations collections).
• And the list goes on and on.....

So, for the larger geoscience education community, I wonder:

• Do you feel pressure (either internal or institutional) to create your own instructional materials?
• Do you get professional (promotion and tenure) credit for creating your own materials?
• Are there sanctions (explicit or implicit) against using materials available through external sources?
• Is "not invented here" now a moot point?

My sense is that in this new millennium the geoscience education community has evolved well past "not invented here" and the expectation of using shared resources in our course work is now deeply enculturated. Has this been your experience? Comments and examples from all sides of this question are welcome and encouraged.

American Geophysical Union, 1997, Shaping the Future of Undergraduate Earth Science Education, Innovation and Change Using an Earth System Approach, F. Ireton, C. Manduca, D. Mogk (eds). http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/spheres/

Fox, S., Manduca, C. A., and Iverson, E., 2005. Building Educational Portals atop Digital Libraries, D-Lib, 11 (1) http://dlib.org/dlib/january05/fox/01fox.html

Kastens, K., 2005, The DLESE Community Review System: Gathering, Aggregating, and Disseminating User Feedback about the Effectiveness of Web-based Educational Resources'] JGE v. 53 #1, p. 37-43) http://nagt.org/files/nagt/jge/abstracts/Kastens_v53n1.pdf

Kastens and Holzman, 2006, The Digital Library for Earth System Education Provides Individualized Reports for Teachers on the Effectiveness of Educational Resources in Their Own Classrooms, D-Lib Magazine Vol 12 #1; www.dlib.org/dlib/january06/kastens/01kastens.html

Manduca, C. A., and Mogk, D. M., 2000, Digital Library for Earth System Education: A Community Plan, University of Oklahoma, 44 pp. http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/25458.pdf

Manduca, C.A., Iverson, E.R., Fox, S.P., McMartin, F. (2005). Influencing User Behavior through Digital Library Design: An Example from the Geosciences , D-Lib, vol 11(5). (Recipient of the Geoscience Information Society's Best Paper Award for 2006!) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may05/fox/05fox.html

Manduca, C.A., S. Fox, and E.R. Iverson (2006). Digital Library as Network and Community Center. D-Lib, 12(12). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december06/manduca/12manduca.html