Conference Overview

Virtual Conference February 2027

This online conference will bring together Earth educators from across disciplines to join together in a community discussion of how AI is impacting undergraduate geoscience teaching and learning, how we are changing our practices, and to chart a path forward. It builds from and responds to the energy and interest expressed by the community at our December 2025 webinar. This conference will provide opportunities for geoscience educators to share with their peers how they've adapted to a world with AI: what has worked, what has not, and how we are thinking about the change. Conference participants will collaborate in the development of a set of public products which will reflect the breadth of current experiences across the community, highlight key resources and promising approaches, and articulate actionable next steps to address high-priority needs. In contrast to the broad, pan-disciplinary discourse around AI and education currently playing out across institutions and nationally, this conference focuses specifically on the geosciences and closely allied disciplines. This will allow participants to engage concretely and deeply with the day-to-day reality of how AI is playing in their classrooms. This conference will provide the time and space to share and develop ideas that can be moved forward by the entire community.

Conference Goals

  • Capture the state of AI impact in geoscience classrooms from the practitioner's point of view, both challenges and opportunities for geoscience education. Of particular importance is identifying the most important elements that need future attention from the community.
  • Provide opportunities for geoscience educators to share their experiences and insights around AI, in service to advancing knowledge of promising practices that improve classroom experiences and student outcomes.
  • Develop an enduring record that captures the breadth of those experiences to share with the larger community via the website, with the opportunity for the materials and body of knowledge to grow after the meeting.

Disciplinary Focus

This conference for educators is centered around the set of disciplines involved in teaching about the Earth.  This includes traditional 'geoscience' fields such as geology, atmospheric science and oceanography, as well as environmental science and physical geography. If you teach undergraduates about the systems and dynamics of the biosphere we live in, this conference is for you.

AI Focus

This event will allow participants to engage with topics on all the different ways AI tools, broadly construed, intersect with the geoscience classroom.  These include the pedagogic challenges and potential of the latest generative AI tools, as well as if and how our curricula should reflect the machine learning approaches that are of growing importance to the research in our disciplines.

Conference Dates and Structure

The conference will combine two components: a set of topical by-invitation working group sessions, and union events open to the entire community.  All events are online, supported by the conference website, with synchronous sessions conducted via Zoom.

  • Working Groups — February 8-12: Topical working groups meet across three, 2-hour sessions during this week.
  • Union Sessions — February 17-18: Speakers, Panels, Online Posters, Share Fair

Cost

The entire event is free to participants.  Registration is required.

Participation Options and Registration  

  • Full participation option: union and working groups.  A limited number of registrants who apply for this option will be selected as full participants.  They will participate in an interest-based topical working group to produce a public-facing product, and will also have full access to the union sessions.
  • Union-session only option. All educators who register will have full access to the union sessions.  They may attend the speaker and panel sessions.  They may attend, and optionally present, in the poster and share fair events.  
  • All conference materials will be made available to the public through the conference website. This includes access to the community-contributed teaching resources, including synthesis resources generated by the working groups.

Registration for everyone, including the full-participation application, will open in October 2026. The application for the full participation option will close on December 13. The union-session only registration option will remain open through January 2027.

More details will be available ahead of the conference on:

  • Submitting to the public, online poster session
  • Contributing to the community collection of classroom AI experiences
  • Participating as an exhibitor or sharing an online demonstration.

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