Teaching Activities

These teaching activities have been submitted by faculty teaching in the lower-division at a variety of institutions. They showcase examples of research experiences or provide practice with individual pieces of the research process.


Results 1 - 10 of 282 matches

Poster Project for an Introductory Physical Geology Course
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This page details a term project that replaced the comprehensive final exam in an introductory physical geology course. For the project, each student prepares a poster showing analysis of geological data using a ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Lesson 3: The Value of a Water Footprint (High School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
Session 1 of this lesson begins with a quick activity to get students thinking about their direct and virtual water use. It introduces a few new ideas for virtual water use that may surprise students, including the ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Geology of Yosemite Valley
Nicolas Barth, University of California-Riverside
This is a four-part module designed to be flexible in duration and student grade-level. (1) Geology of Yosemite Valley Virtual Field Trip. A 43-stop web-based Google Earth tour with embedded views, hyperlinked ...

Online Field Experience Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the Teaching with Online Field Experiences Exemplary collection
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Constructing a 3D bathymetry model
Jessica Kleiss, Lewis & Clark College
Student groups build a scaled cardboard physical model of a seafloor feature in a box, and then close the box and affix a scale. Student groups then swap boxes and perform "soundings" to determine which ...

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Modeling Rare Plant Distributions Using ArcGIS
Elizabeth Crook, University of California-Irvine
In this activity, students work with rare plant occurrence data from the Nature Reserve of Orange County, California to create species distribution maps in ArcGIS. Students are given shapefiles of species ...

Using concept sketches for field trip wrap-up
Barb Tewksbury, Hamilton College
This is a post-field trip assignment in a structural geology course. Students create a set of concept sketches, with a short introduction, to illustrate the structural features and geologic history of the area, ...

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Mapping Plate Tectonic Boundaries
Nathan Toke, Utah Valley University
In this classroom activity, students will work in groups to observe how patterns of topography, bathymetry, earthquake locations and depths, and the location of volcanoes vary across regions of the Earth. They will ...

Calculating and using Unit Hydrograph using Matlab
Negin Hayatbini, University of California-Irvine; Alexandre Martinez, University of California-Irvine
We are using the concept of Unit Hydrograph to understand the behavior of a watershed following a rain event and to calculate the runoff following any rainfall event.

Geologic Issues: Community Impacts and Science Communication
Linda Reinen, Pomona College; Karen Kortz, Community College of Rhode Island
Responding to the need for recruitment and retention of a diverse geoscience population, we developed a capstone homework assignment for use in introductory-level geoscience courses. This is a place- and ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Digital poster of rocks and minerals
Aida Farough
This project is designed based on 21st century skills and to help students engage in, experience, explore and evolve science. As a part of the activity students create a digital poster (infographic) using free ...