Initial Publication Date: August 27, 2026
DOI | Cite this

Strong Pedagogy

Resources for enhancing student engagement, higher-order thinking, quantitative reasoning and problem-solving skills in every course, through effective curriculum design, active pedagogy, and professional development opportunities. There is a separate page if you are looking specifically for Teaching Activities ».

Active Learning

Research has shown that active learning techniques can help students learn more effectively; there are many strategies available for incorporating active learning into any classroom, including:

Interactive Lectures, Jigsaws, Classroom Experiments, and many others from Pedagogy in Action

Student Engagement

Students must be engaged to learn. Find strategies to engage students in course content, learn more about motivation, and connect learning to the world around them.

Authentic Research opportunities
Making connections to the real world
Demonstrate the relevance of STEM to students' lives
Understand motivation and the affective domain

Program and Course Design

Intentional design of programs and courses is the best strategy for ensuring that the desired learning happens. Program design is essential to successful retention and degree completion by all students. Learn more about:

Increase the diversity of STEM graduates
Strategies for program design and assessment
Effective course design and student learning assessment
Curriculum by Design essay

Higher-Order Thinking

Teaching students higher order skills such as critical and systems thinking can be incorporated into classroom activities to strengthen students' skills in these areas. See resources focused on:

Tackle interdisciplinary, wicked problems like these from BASICS
Teach with models
Integrate cutting edge research into education
Develop students' ability to reflect on and monitor their learning through metacognition
Utilize quantitative approaches to increase students' skills
Develop strong spatial thinking and visualization skills

Projects with a Pedagogical Focus

Skip to search results Skip to search facet filters Skip to text search form Skip to pagination

Results 1 - 5 of 34 matches

Research on Learning
This site aggregates resources collected and developed for and in response to a 2002 workshop: Bringing Research on Learning to the Geosciences. The website seeks to further the conversations that were begun at the ...

Grade Level: College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)
Subject: Geoscience

TREX - Tree Ring Expeditions
TREX provides a series of undergraduate labs that engage students in exploring tree ring science through virtual fields trips and using data from online data. SERC helped develop the structure for this website as ...

Grade Level: College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)
Subject: Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change:Paleoclimate records, Impacts of climate change, Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change, Environmental Science:Global Change and Climate:Climate Change:Paleoclimate records, Impacts of climate change, Environmental Science:Ecosystems

E-STEM
The Environmental STEM (E-STEM) field experience reimagined the traditional undergraduate geology field course as a field and career preparation program for first- and second-year students interested in ...

Grade Level: College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)

A Civil Action - The Woburn Toxic Trial
This project developed web-based curricular materials investigating the events in Woburn, MA that inspired the movie A Civil Action. Developed from a popular mock-trial course at Ohio State University, the site ...

Grade Level: College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)
Subject: Geoscience:Hydrology:Ground Water, Environmental Science:Water Quality and Quantity, Waste:Toxic and Hazardous Wastes, Environmental Science:Policy:Environmental Ethics/Values

Spatial Thinking Workbook
The Spatial Thinking Workbook project is focused on improving spatial skills in upper-division undergraduate geoscience courses. SERC was involved in the leadership of this project and the development of its ...

Grade Level: College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)
Subject: Geoscience