InTeGrate Project Products

The InTeGrate STEP Center for the Geosciences sought to improve Earth literacy and build a workforce prepared to tackle urgent environmental and resource issues facing humanity. To this end, InTeGrate supported interdisciplinary teaching about Earth and environmental issues across the undergraduate curriculum.  The project collected and synthesized existing work into an extensive website; developed, tested and published 26 curriculum modules, 6 courses, and 16 program models; implemented large professional development programs involving more than 1500 educators; and created a national scale community which continues to work toward these goals. 

InTeGrate's approach to teaching emphasized building interdisciplinary connections between geoscience and societal issues and using proven high-impact teaching practices that focus on active learning, working with data, and problem-solving. InTeGrate created an effective and scalable system for collaborative development of undergraduate instructional materials. The resulting materials have proven to be adaptable to a variety of institutional and instructional contexts and educative for the faculty who use them.  InTeGrate materials have been adapted, adopted, or used as inspiration in more than 3000 courses enrolling more than 110,000 students at more than 1000 institutions of higher education in the United States. Given the difficulty of obtaining information on use, these numbers are surely an underestimate.  Students taught with InTeGrate's materials show increased mastery of systems thinking, which is essential for tackling many environmental grand challenges and yet is difficult to teach.  Instruction with InTeGrate materials may be closing some pre-existing gaps in geoscience literacy among women and under-represented minorities (URM) and increasing motivation among URM's towards careers involving the Earth and environment.  InTeGrate's curriculum development system has been adapted by other projects. 

InTeGrate expanded the opportunities for students to learn about the Earth.  First and foremost this was accomplished by infusing geoscience content into courses and programs across the curriculum, opening up new venues for learning outside of geoscience programs. Nearly 50% of the teaching materials developed by InTeGrate were designed for use in humanities, social science, or interdisciplinary courses, and five of the program models demonstrate how geoscience learning can be infused in interdisciplinary programs.  In addition, InTeGrate piloted program models that focused on increasing access to learning about Earth through on-line courses and programs, expanding programming at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and strengthening preparation of teachers to teach about Earth. 

Faculty participating in the project became better teachers.  The strongest teaching was observed in faculty involved in materials development, but the benefits extend to participants at all levels of engagement.  Even faculty who use InTeGrate's materials with no professional support are observed to implement high-impact teaching practices above national norms in undergraduate geoscience.  Many project participants also became more interested in interdisciplinary teaching and collaboration and some developed important skills in assessing student learning or educational research.  Through their work on InTeGrate, some participants have emerged as leaders, subsequently taking on roles in the National Association of Geoscience Teachers and its professional development programs, obtaining grant funding for research, and leading collaborative efforts to improve geoscience education. In all aspects of the project, InTeGrate worked diligently to include diverse individuals, as well as educators from all types of institutions. Thus, these impacts are spread broadly throughout the geoscience community and beyond.

In aggregate, InTeGrate programming created a large, diverse community of practice that is poised to continue into the future.  At the core of this community are the 1678 project participants in materials development, implementation programs, workshops, webinars and project leadership.  More than 4600 individuals have engaged with the project in some way including those that have expressed interest in using the materials. During the course of the project this community developed a shared goals, values and philosophy, interacted regularly, improved its practices, and created products of value to the community.  This community continues to interact, learn together, and grow through the NAGT On the Cutting Edge Professional Development Program.  Leadership developed during the project is carrying forward the goals, values, philosophy and strategies that are signatures of the project.