Summary, Guiding Question #2

What is the best way to expand, compile, and promote scientific ocean drilling-related educational resources?

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Figure 4: An example of a user-friendly, multi-source, one-stop database from SERC: Teach The Earth. A portal, with the ability for educators to browse multiple websites at once.

Provenance: Adriane Lam, SUNY at Binghamton
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

Values and Priorities

• Increase visibility, access, and use of high quality educational resources related to scientific ocean drilling. Most or all educational materials should be readily available in online formats, and places that have demonstrated success reaching target audiences for a broad range of categories and learners. Resources and activities should be reviewed for relevance, scientific accuracy and for the nature of the pedagogical approach. 
• Publicize existing and forthcoming resources.  A large percentage of participants indicated they create their own educational resources (Figure 3), which could be publicized with an online database. Educators must know about the resources to use and that are available.  

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Figure 3. Pre-workshop survey results from the question ‘If you have/do use scientific ocean drilling-related educational resources, what is the origin of the resource?’ A third (33%) of respondents (n=57) indicated they are using self-created resources.

Provenance: Adriane Lam, SUNY at Binghamton
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

Recommended Tools and/or Strategies

• Strategically grow a findable, well-maintained, user-friendly database of all educational materials related to scientific ocean drilling. While USSSP hosts an educational materials database (that evolved from the Deep Earth Academy hosted by Ocean Leadership), access/findability needs to be optimized to expand database impact and increase use of existing and future educational resources. An optimized database should include refined search options and categories for ease of finding and organizing activities (e.g., Figure 4). Through the use of tags, educators could find resources that are age and learning level appropriate for their students. One option is to create a new front door to the existing database through the Science Education Resource Center (SERC), which has a demonstrated track record for organizing and hosting SciOD educational resources and a history of high use (much higher than the existing USSSP education materials database). As an example of its reach: SERC's website had more than 4 million unique visitors in 2020. A SERC site could either supplement the existing USSSP education materials database (via a new door to the materials) and/or be the primary archive for educational resources. Using an established go-to open access database that includes a peer-review process in the geosciences increases findability, credibility, and potential for use. Several other organizations and programs that  already use SERC and are part of the related NAGT Teach the Earth (TTE) database, can serve as models for how this can be done by SciOD. SciOP already has a presence in SERC and TTE so this is a question of organizing, compiling, and adding new high quality resources. This same SERC platform can be used to host SciOP workshops and workshop materials (as demonstrated by the SciOP IMPACT workshop series) that further builds the collection of resources for educators (and potentially scientists, if training workshops and related resources are also hosted on SERC).
• Encourage the community to upload resources to the database. As several participants indicated in the pre-workshop survey that they use their personal materials, there is a need to reach out to these educators and encourage them to upload their materials to a database. The creation of such a database or repository is required prior to widely putting out such a call. 
• Host virtual and face-to-face workshops (with online support) focused on ocean drilling-related educational resources in the database. Such workshops could focus on creating and curating scientific ocean drilling related resources, and could be a space where educators create collaborations for additional learning resources. The same database that is used for the educational resources can also host the workshops/workshops materials. 
• Tailor resources hosted on this database (as well as programming and publicity for the resources) to the needs of different audiences. Such audiences include but are not limited to elementary, secondary, undergraduate, as well as informal educators. 
• Create scientific ocean drilling 'teaching kits'. Such teaching kits could be distributed to educators and classrooms who request such resources. Kits could include lesson plans which could be found in the database.
• Promote educational resources in IODP newsletters and social media platforms. Such promotion will increase awareness of such materials. Increased visualizations using a range of mediums could be used to promote learning in addition to building awareness. 

Challenges

• The current educational materials available online appear scattered or have limited findability.Resources need to be catalogued and made accessible through a common point of entry or portal. 
• The current JR website database is in critical need of constant updating. All materials are currently gathered under the 'for educators' tab and separated into very broad categories. This structure was informed by an advisory group, but is not working for all audiences, although there is a new structure that now links directly to the 2050 Science Framework themes that may help. 
• Funding sources for teaching kits, online revamps of the websites in which materials could be stored, etc. needs to be considered. 
• Maintaining a database of educational resources so that it is updated, organized, peer-reviewed, findable, and user-friendly takes dedicated staff and significant time.  
• See also the challenges listed underGuiding Question 4.