Exemplary Teaching Activities
Beginning in 2011, On the Cutting Edge began a process to review the extensive collection of activities submitted by workshop participants and members of the geoscience community. With the transition of the On the Cutting Edge program into NAGT the review process is now being used to broadly review online teaching activities relevant to NAGT's community of Earth educators. Through this review processes activities are scored on 5 elements: scientific veracity; alignment of goals, activity, and assessment; pedagogical effectiveness; robustness; and completeness of the description. The activities that score very highly in these areas become part of the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection and are featured below.
You may also be interested in the full collection of teaching activities.
Subject: Geoscience Show all
Theme: Teach the Earth Show all
- Biocomplexity 1 match
- Early Earth 8 matches
- Plate Tectonics 1 match
Teach the Earth > Teaching Topics
Grade Level
Online Readiness
Results 1 - 8 of 8 matches
Unit 4: Impacts of Environmental Change on Organisms: Horses part of Changing Biosphere
Camille Holmgren, SUNY Buffalo State University
In this unit, students will gain a deep-time perspective on how life evolves on a dynamic planet. They will use the Equidae (horse family) as a case study to examine the relationship among climate, biomes, and ...
Learn more about this review process.
Learn more about this review process.
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 ...
Learn more about this review process.
Learn more about this review process.
The Evolution of Earth through Time part of Rates and Time:Teaching Activities
Phil Stokes, The University of Arizona
This activity is designed for large freshman courses (>200 students) and is used in-class. The activity requires a short (15 minute) overview of Earth history before students have the opportunity to work through ...
Learn more about this review process.
Radiocarbon dating project part of Rates and Time:Teaching Activities
Mark Schmitz, Boise State University
This is an example of an activity used in a Quaternary Geochronology course, in which a small group of students (3-4) is tasked with transforming a set of activity measurements into radiocarbon ages and calibrated ...
Learn more about this review process.
Depositional Environments and Geologic History Labs part of Rates and Time:Teaching Activities
Maria Waller, Wellesley College; Kathy Gilbert, Wellesley College
This is a pair of labs that incrementally prepare students to interpret the geologic history of a rock sequence. The first lab introduces students to depositional environments and fossils. The second lab presents a ...
Learn more about this review process.
Exploring the nature of geoscience using cartoon cards part of Integrate:Workshops and Webinars:Teaching the Methods of Geoscience:Activities
Anne Egger, Central Washington University
In this activity, students work in groups to put a set of cartoon cards in order, much in the way that we might assemble a geologic history. The primary goal of the activity is to explore the nature of science in general and the nature of geoscience or historical science specifically, without requiring any content knowledge.
Learn more about this review process.
Relative Geologic Time and the Geologic Time Scale part of Paleontology:Activities
Bret Bennington, Hofstra University
Group simulation of the development of the geologic time scale illustrating concepts of correlation and relative time. Extremely effective for teaching the significance of the geologic time scale.
Learn more about this review process.
Biozones, stratigraphic log correlation, and corresponding interpretation of paleoenvironments. part of Rates and Time:Teaching Activities
Francis Jones, University of British Columbia
This exercise is a guided opportunity for any number of students (even hundreds) to start using recently learned, lower-level knowledge about stratigraphy and biostratigraphy in an integrative, interpretation ...
Learn more about this review process.