Unit 3: Oceans As Habitat: Sustaining Life in the Ocean part of Ocean Sustainability
MICHELLE KINZEL, Southwestern College; Astrid Schnetzer, North Carolina State University; Cara Thompson, Arizona State University at the West Campus
Students will be able to identify the functional roles that organisms play in ocean ecosystems. How do human-induced changes in ocean conditions affect biodiversity, and thereby the health and resilience of a coral ...

Unit 2: Ocean Conditions: Ancient to Modern part of Ocean Sustainability
MICHELLE KINZEL, Southwestern College; Astrid Schnetzer, North Carolina State University; Cara Thompson, Arizona State University at the West Campus
Students will be provided with seawater pH and carbon dioxide concentration (pCO2) data spanning as far back as 1850. They will describe trends in pH, pCO2 and atmospheric CO2 concentration, outline why these ...

Unit 2: Earth's Atmosphere and Its Influence on Temperature part of Earths Thermostat
Allison Dunn, Worcester State University; Phil Resor, Wesleyan University; Bob Mackay, Clark College
This unit investigates the role of the atmosphere on incoming solar and outgoing terrestrial radiation and analyzes modern trends in greenhouse gas concentrations. Students first investigate radiation spectra to ...

Unit 1: Energy, Space, and Earth's Effective Temperature part of Earths Thermostat
Allison Dunn, Worcester State University; Phil Resor, Wesleyan University; Bob Mackay, Clark College
This unit is designed to engage students by introducing them to patterns in recent climate and investigating possible reasons for recent changes. Students work in small groups to plot and analyze real-world ...

Unit 5: Summative assessment project part of Analyzing High Resolution Topography with TLS and SfM
Bruce Douglas (Indiana University) Chris Crosby (EarthScope Consortium) Kate Shervais (UNAVCO)
Unit 5 is the summative assessment for the module. This final exercise takes eight to ten hours. The exercise evaluates students' developed skills in survey design, execution of a geodetic survey, and simple ...

Unit 5: Analyzing Complexity part of Systems Thinking
deborah gross, Carleton College; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; Karl Kreutz, University of Maine
This unit has students build on a system diagram, to include new knowledge about quantitative values and relationships. They will also write about and discuss what they know about their systems, the questions that ...

Unit 3: Modeling a System part of Systems Thinking
Karl Kreutz, University of Maine; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; deborah gross, Carleton College
This unit introduces systems modeling, which allows students to quantify and manipulate system components to create system responses. Students use a simple systems model of a bathtub to explore the effect of flow ...

Unit 4: Feedbacks in a System part of Systems Thinking
Karl Kreutz, University of Maine; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; deborah gross, Carleton College
Feedbacks are a critical part of many systems. In this unit, students use a systems model to explore the effect of positive (reinforcing) and negative (balancing) feedbacks on system behavior. Model results are ...

Unit 1: Introduction to Systems Thinking – What is a System? part of Systems Thinking
Karl Kreutz, University of Maine; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; deborah gross, Carleton College
This unit introduces systems and systems thinking. The unit is easily adaptable to any course and includes an introduction of terminology, motivation for using systems thinking, and practice reading, as well as ...

Unit 2: Picturing Complexity part of Systems Thinking
deborah gross, Carleton College; Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; Karl Kreutz, University of Maine
This unit includes an opportunity for students to move from definitions into reading and creating a diagram of a complex system relevant to their course, and then to exploring the connections between the components ...