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.

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Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized Board Game part of Teaching Activities
Rowan Martindale, The University of Texas at Austin
Incorporating games in teaching can help students retain material and become innovative problem solvers through engagement and enjoyment. Our board game, "Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized" can be used as an ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Are we in a modern mass extinction? part of Teaching Activities
John Fronimos, Auburn University Main Campus
A lab activity evaluating the hypothesis that Earth's biosphere is currently undergoing a mass extinction, the so-called "sixth extinction." Students practice quantitative skills by calculating ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Evolution of Extinct Animals part of Teaching Activities
Phil Novack-Gottshall, Benedictine University
A classroom/lab activity using the Paleobiology Database to produce and interpret diversity curves for various groups of important and popular extinct animals, such as trilobites, ammonites, and dinosaurs. Activity ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Tracking Sea Level and Paleoenvironments with Fossils part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Pete Berquist, Virginia Peninsula Community College
Students use the Paleobiology Database Navigator to examine changes in sea level in southeastern North America throughout the Cretaceous, Paleogene, and Neogene Periods. They will plot the change in distribution of ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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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 ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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InTeGrate Developed This material was developed and reviewed through the InTeGrate curricular materials development process.
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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 ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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GETSI Developed This material was developed and reviewed through the GETSI curricular materials development process.
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Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized Board Game - High School Edition part of Teaching Activities
Rowan Martindale, The University of Texas at Austin
"Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized" can be used as an active learning tool in a class or lab to promote understanding of Earth processes (Geology), deep time, fossils, and the history of life on Earth ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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The Panama Passageway: Using the PBDB to constrain the timing and extent of the The Great American Biotic Interchange part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Callan Bentley, Piedmont Virginia Community College
Students learn how to use the online Paleobiology Database to map changes in the distribution of fossil vertebrates in the Americas through time. They will generate distribution maps for several key fossil groups ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Introduction to the Trilobites: Morphology, Macroevolution and More part of Paleontology:Activities
Michelle Casey, University of Kansas Main Campus
The learning goals for this lab are the following: 1) to familiarize students with the anatomy and terminology relating to trilobites; 2) to give students experience identifying morphologic structures on real ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Iceberg of Antarctica part of IODP School of Rock 2020:Teaching Activities
Turtle Haste, Desert Ridge Middle School; Diane Nihart, Albuquerque Public Schools
After exploring the various hands-on, art, kinesthetic activities, and electronic resources after reading the book: Iceberg of Antarctica by Marlo Garnsworthy, students will develop, create, and produce their own ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
Learn more about this review process.