Driving Through Geologic Time - An analogy
Eric Baer, Highline Community College
An analogy of the Earth's history to a cross-country drive.

Dino Doom
Sina Kirk, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
This is an online learning experience that transports learners around the world to different locations related to the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event. Students will collect and analyze evidence to ...

How much is a million? How big is a billion?
Danita Brandt, Michigan State University
We constructed a geologic timeline along a 5K road-race route across the MSU campus at a scale of 1 meter = 1 million years, using signage to mark important events in the history of life. In addition to over 1500 race participants, numerous casual observers were exposed to the timeline. This project works well in the classroom at a scale of 1 mm = 1 million years, and as a manageable one-day outdoor sidewalk chalk activity at a scale of 1" = 1 million years. Timelines drawn to scale lead the observer to the inescapable conclusions that "simple" life appeared early in Earth history; that it took the bulk of Earth history to achieve the next, multi-cellular stage of development; and that once the metazoan threshold was crossed, subsequent biological diversification-and the resulting fossil record-followed in rapid succession.

Unit 2: The Carbon Cycle
Callan Bentley, Piedmont Virginia Community College
Students will explore the different aspects of the carbon cycle on Earth. This includes the original source of all the carbon on our planet, the near ubiquity of carbon, the six principle reservoirs of carbon in ...

Analyzing datasets in ecology and evolution to teach the nature and process of science
Rebecca Price, University of Washington-Tacoma Campus
This quarter-long project forms the basis of a third-year course for majors and nonmajors at the University of Washington, Bothell called Science Methods and Practice. Students use databases to identify novel research questions, and extract data to test their hypotheses. They frame the question with primary literature, address the questions with inferential statistics, and discuss the results with more primary literature. The product is a scientific paper; each step of the process is scaffolded and evaluated. Given time limitations, we avoid devoting time to data collection; instead, we sharpen students' ability to make sense of a large body of quantitative data, a situation they may rarely have encountered. We treat statistics with a strictly conceptual, pragmatic, and abbreviated approach; i.e., we ask students to know which basic test to choose to assess a linear relationship vs. a difference between two means. We stress the need for a normal distribution in order to use these tests, and how to interpret the results; we leave the rest for stats courses, and we do not teach the mathematics. This approach proves beneficial even to those who have already had a statistics course, because it is often the first time they make decisions about applying statistics to their own research questions. We incorporate peer review and collaborative work throughout the quarter. We form collaborative groups around the research questions they ask, enabling them to share primary literature they find, and preparing them well to review each other's writing. We encourage them to cite each other's work. They write formal peer reviews of each other's papers, and they submit their final paper with a letter-to-the-editor highlighting how their research has addressed previous feedback. A major advantage of this course is that an instructor can easily modify it to suit any area of expertise. Students have worked with data about how a snail's morphology changes in response to its environment (Price, 2012), how students understand genetic drift (Price et al. 2014), maximum body size in the fossil record (Payne et al. 2008), range shifts (Ettinger et al. 2011), and urban crop pollination (Waters and Clifford 2014).

Knossos Ancient Lake Environment, Australia
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
The 2.73 Ga Knossos Locality is a succession of clastic and carbonate rocks outcropping along the southern margin of the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia. It hosts abundant, diverse and exceptionally ...

Unit 3: Geologic Record of Past Climate
Callan Bentley, Piedmont Virginia Community College
Students will be introduced to a few of the different methods used in paleoclimatology, including isotopic ratios as paleotemperature proxies. They will investigate the greenhouse gas connections of two ancient ...

Living Microorganisms, Shark Bay, Australia
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
3,000 years ago microbes started building up stromatolites in Shark Bay, Western Australia. These structures are the earliest signs of life on Earth, and are considered the longest continuing biological lineage. ...

Rates of Change and Deep Time in the Middle Grades Classroom
Fred Siewers, Western Kentucky University
The nature and scientific measurement of geological and cosmological time are among the most misunderstood and difficult to teach concepts in all of K-12 science education. To address this issue, a multi-disciplinary team of geologists, astronomers and education professionals at Western Kentucky University developed a series of professional development workshops for pre- and in-service middle grades teachers. The participants clearly advanced their content understanding of geological and cosmological time and the implementation plans received clearly show a desire to apply many of the activities learned in the workshop.

Illustrating the Process of Science Using Leaf-Margin Analyses
Wendi J. W. Williams, South Texas College
The activity is derived from a Smithsonian Institution Middle to High School lesson distributed approximately 10 years ago using Leaf-Margin Analyses on fossil leaves from Wyoming, U.S. (based on work by Dr. Scott ...