Community Contribution Tool Project: Keeping data-rich teaching resources up-to-date

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Community Contributions include modifications and suggestions from educators who have used a specific teaching activity

Provenance: Sean Fox, Carleton College
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.

Significant investments have been made in developing the wide array of free online activities available through SERC and NAGT (National Association of Geoscience Teachers). These represent a vast shared resource relied on by thousands of instructors and supporting the learning of tens if not hundreds of thousands of students per year.

However, after a project's funding ends, it can be challenging to maintain the currency of the activities it produced – particularly for data-rich activities. The NSF-IUSE funded*Community Contribution Tool Project now makes it possible for instructors to contribute updates or adaptations to particular activities. The project has also generated community recommendations for building more robust data-rich activities from the outset.

Updating existing resources

The Community Contribution Tool (CCT) provides a mechanism for community members who've used SERC-hosted teaching activities with their students to share back their experiences, modifications, and updates. All activities on the SERC site now offer users the CCT input portal.

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Workshop participants at the Earth Educators' Rendezvous CCT workshop.

Provenance: Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope
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.

The CCT was refined and tested during a workshop at the 2024 Earth Educators Rendezvous. Twenty-one participants learned to use it and worked on updating teaching modules from the InTeGrate (Interdisciplinary Teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future) and GETSI (GEophysics Tools for Societal Issues) collections.

Building more robust data-rich resources from the start

Another outcome from the 2024 workshop was a set of community recommendations: Guidance for Developing Robust Data-rich Activities. If future projects or individuals follow these recommendations, time-sensitive data-rich activities will be easier to update going forward.

Learn more

The webinar, Updated data-rich activities to use in your classroom now!, overviews the activities that have been recently updated and how the community can contribute to keeping our shared resources up-to-date.

Monday, February 3, 2025 - 11 AM Pacific | 12 PM Mountain | 1 PM Central | 2 PM Eastern

*Awards: NSF-2315542, NSF-2315543. Collaborating institutions California State University Chico, Carleton College's Science Education Resource Center, and EarthScope Consortium.