About Profiles
HideAllison Dunn
Earth, Environment, and Physics
Worcester State University
Website Content Contributions
Course Modules (7)
Unit 5: Balancing the Radiation Budget: A Jigsaw Exploration of the Global Climate System (Part 2) part of Earths Thermostat
In this two-day activity spanning Units 4 and 5, students analyze spatial variation in climate through a map-based jigsaw exploration of NASA's Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy Systems (CERES) Energy ...
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Activities (2)
Net Radiation and Temperature part of Introductory Courses:Activities
This assignment helps students think about how net radiation affects surface temperature.
Google Earth, Streams, and Glaciers part of Introductory Courses:Activities
In this assignment, students download Google Earth and use it to investigate some of the fluvial and glacial processes introduced in lecture.
Course (1)
Allison Dunn: Using Earth's Thermostat in Physical Geography at Worcester State University part of Earths Thermostat
Capturing students' interest with real data I teach Physical Geography, a survey class that introduces students to the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. I incorporated the Earth's Thermostat module in lieu of my typical coverage of chapters on Earth's energy balance, temperature, and climate change. My students really responded to the in-class activities, and you could hear an excited buzz as different groups worked their way through the material for each activity. I think this module is especially powerful because it lets students directly engage with the data behind a major societal issue (climate change). By working with the data itself, instead of reading about it in a text, they felt a greater ownership and understanding of this challenge facing our society.