Tim Shipley

Mapping for Decision-making part of GET Spatial Learning:Blog
This blog post examines how geoscience education can enhance decision-making skills by integrating spatial tools and cross-scale analyses to address complex societal challenges, emphasizing local civic engagement, hotspot mapping, and the use of public datasets to connect earth systems with community priorities and improve science literacy.

Errors in Spatial Thinking: When students go wrong, what are they thinking and how can we help them? part of GET Spatial Learning:Blog
This blog post, authored by geoscience educators, examines common errors in students' spatial thinking—such as misleading pattern recognition, incorrect penetrative reasoning, and non-penetrative visualization—and explores cognitive underpinnings of these mistakes, offering targeted pedagogical strategies to address them in geoscience education.

Expertise and Field-data Collection part of GET Spatial Learning:Blog
A blog post exploring cognitive processes in geology, focusing on expert field-data collection strategies—reconnaissance, mapping, sampling, and problem-solving modes—and the interplay between data-driven and theory-driven approaches, while advocating for research to improve scientific practice through cognitive science insights.

Trading zones combining cognitive psychology and disciplinary science part of GET Spatial Learning:Blog
This blog page, authored by Kim Kastens and Tim Shipley, explores the concept of "trading zones" in interdisciplinary research, drawing on Peter Galison's framework to argue that collaboration between cognitive psychology and disciplinary sciences fosters mutual theoretical advancement by applying cognitive theories to concrete disciplinary problems, thereby accelerating discovery in both fields.

What would a Geoscience Education Research toolbox look like? part of GET Spatial Learning:Blog
This blog post, authored by a cognitive scientist and geologist, explores the development of a Geoscience Education Research toolbox through interdisciplinary collaboration at an NSF-funded Science of Learning Center, detailing tools for characterizing, measuring, and improving spatial thinking in geoscience education, with exemplars like the Geologic Block Cross-sectioning Test and the Spatial Thinking Workbook.

Learning to Form Accurate Mental Models part of GET Spatial Learning:Blog
This blog page from SERC's GET Spatial Learning project highlights an Eos article by Davatzes, Gagnier, Resnick, and Shipley on developing accurate mental models in geoscience education, emphasizing cognitive strategies like gesture use in learning spatial concepts.

Why is teaching and learning about feedback loops hard? part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2020:Program:Oral Sessions:Oral Session II
Feedback loops provide a powerful explanatory framework for analyzing important Earth and environmental processes, such as climate change and predatory/prey balance. Our pilot research and review of the literature ...

Challenges in making meaning from Ground Motion Visualizations: The role of geoscience knowledge in interpreting dynamic spatiotemporal patterns part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2019:Program:Oral Sessions:Thursday B
The USArray Ground Motion Visualization (GMV) is an IRIS video product that illustrates seismic waves traveling away from an earthquake by depicting seismometers as symbols that vary in color according to recorded ...

Reasoning about Feedback Loops part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2018:Program:Poster Sessions:Wednesday
Understanding the role of feedback loops in the geosciences and related fields is an important yet challenging topic for students and teachers alike. Grasping the patterns that tend to arise in dynamic systems, and ...

CogSketch worksheet: Promoting sketching in the geosciences with interactive technology part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2016:Program:Poster Sessions:Tuesday
Sketching is a valuable activity to help students develop spatial skills and understand difficult geoscience concepts. Yet, sketching is rarely implemented at the introductory level due to the time needed to grade ...

What geoscience experts and novices look at and what they see when viewing geoscience data visualizations part of Rendezvous 2015:Program:Abstracts
This study investigated how geoscience novices and experts approach data visualizations made from an important type of geoscience data: shaded relief images made from a digital elevation model using a ...

Teaching Spatial Thinking in Mineralogy, Structural Geology, and Sedimentology & Stratigraphy: Tools and Strategies from Cognitive Science Research part of Rendezvous 2015:Program:Abstracts
Spatial visualization is an essential skill in the STEM disciplines, including the geological sciences. Undergraduate students, including geoscience majors in upper-level courses, bring a wide range of spatial ...

What would a GER toolbox look like? part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2016:Program:Morning Workshops:GER:Idea Papers
Idea Paper from the 2016 Earth Educators' Rendezvous exploring the structure of a Geoscience Education Research (GER) toolbox through four categories of tools—characterizing, measuring, improving, and supporting the design of learning—drawn from interdisciplinary collaboration between cognitive science and geoscience.

Visualizing Geology: A Case Study of the Baraboo Ranges, Wisconsin part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2016:Program:Sunday Events
× A field trip to the Baraboo Ranges provides much more than a show-and-tell opportunity. It provides a unique opportunity to help students understand how to visualize geologic relationships at regional and ...

Wrapping your Head around Environmental Problems by Leveraging Feedback Loop Thinking part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2024:Program:Morning Workshops:Wrapping your Head around Environmental Problems by Leveraging Feedback Loop Thinking
Feedback loops (FL) are a powerful concept for Earth educators in the 21st century, because positive/reinforcing feedback loops underlie many environmental problems, while negative/balancing feedback loops underlie ...

Teaching and Learning About Feedback Loops part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2021:Program:Morning Workshops:Teaching and Learning About Feedback Loops
Feedback loops (FLs) are a powerful concept for Earth educators in the 21st century. Reinforcing (aka "positive") feedback loops underlie many environmental problems, including climate change and ...

Engaging Your Students with Visual Representations: Why, What, and How part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2021:Program:Morning Workshops:Engaging your students with visual representations: Why, What, and How
Visual-spatial reasoning is important for understanding many of the structures and processes in the geosciences. To make learning more efficient, instructors must engage students using strategies that facilitate ...

Research at the Interface of DBER and Cognitive Science part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2016:Program:Morning Workshops:DBER and Cognitive Science
The workshop aims to strengthen ties between the cognitive science and Geoscience education communities. The first day will include presentations by cognitive scientists who have expertise in education research ...

Intro to Quantitative Education Research Methods part of Rendezvous 2015:Program:Mini Workshops:Quantitative Ed Research
This session is for those who want to increase their ability to conduct education research and to evaluate published research. Participants will have a chance to learn about principles of statistical testing and ...