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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Discover Plate Tectonics part of Guided Inquiry Introductory Geology Labs:Activities
Angela Daneshmand, Santiago Canyon College
This is a student-centered activity for a synchronous online course where students access google slides to complete during a video conferencing session (eg. Zoom) in break out rooms. Students will be introduced to ...

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 3: What's in YOUR watershed? part of Eyes on the Hydrosphere: Tracking Water Resources
Jonathan Harvey, Fort Lewis College, and Becca Walker, Mt. San Antonio College
In this unit, students investigate water resources of their own area or another area of personal interest, which typically gets them very excited. They apply their knowledge from Units 1 and 2 to identify the water ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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What's in the Water? Lesson 4: Drinking Water & Environmental Justice part of Teaching Activities
Kelsey Bitting, Elon University
In this lesson from the "What's in the Water?" PFAS Contamination Unit", students explore equity in drinking water across the U.S. For homework, students read segments of two recent reports ...

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 1: Monitoring Volcanic Activity at Mount St. Helens part of Monitoring Volcanoes and Communicating Risks
Rachel Teasdale (California State University-Chico) and Kaatje van der Hoeven Kraft (Whatcom Community College)
How can data from an impending volcanic dome-building event be used to forecast the hazard to a surrounding community? In this activity, students will examine geodetic data (GPS and lidar) and seismic data in a ...

On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Plate Tectonics: GPS Data, Boundary Zones, and Earthquake Hazards part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Christopher Berg, Orange Coast College; Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope; Julie Elliott, Michigan State University
Students work with high precision GPS data to explore how motion near a plate boundary is distributed over a larger region than the boundary line on the map. This allows them to investigate how earthquake hazard ...

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 2: Monitoring surface and groundwater supply in central and western US part of Eyes on the Hydrosphere: Tracking Water Resources
Jonathan Harvey (Fort Lewis College) and Becca Walker (Mt San Antonio College)
In Unit 2, students learn how the techniques for water budgeting (covered in Unit 1) can be used to monitor both groundwater (High Plains Aquifer) and surface water (western mountain watershed) systems. Students ...

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 3: Glaciers, GPS, and Sea Level Rise part of Measuring the Earth with GPS
Karen M. Kortz (Community College of Rhode Island) Jessica J. Smay (San Jose City College)
GPS data can measure bedrock elevation change in response to the changing mass of glaciers. In this module, students will learn how to read GPS data to interpret how the mass of glaciers in Alaska and Greenland is ...

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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Unit 2: Geophysical Properties of the Subsurface part of Evaluating the Health of an Urban Wetland Using Electrical Resistivity
Compiled by Lee Slater, Rutgers University Newark (lslater@newark.rutgers.edu) Download a ZIP file of this Unit
Archie (1950) defined the term petrophysics to describe the study of the physics of rocks, particularly with respect to the fluids they contain. Although originally focused on geophysical exploration, petrophysics ...

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 2: Earthquakes, GPS, and Plate Movement part of Measuring the Earth with GPS
Karen M. Kortz (Community College of Rhode Island) Jessica J. Smay (San Jose City College)
GPS data can measure bedrock motion in response to deformation of the ground near plate boundaries because of plate tectonics. In this module, students will learn how to read GPS data to interpret how the bedrock ...

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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Module 5 Human Dimensions in the Poles part of Oceans in the News:Oceans in the News – Polar Ocean Science, Data, and the Media
Jonathan Cohen, University of Delaware; Matthew Oliver, University of Delaware; Victoria E Simons, University of Delaware
This unit covers the concept of bioaccumulation of contaminants in a food web, all the way up to humans. Students learn about what constitutes a contaminant, how contaminants can accumulate in an organism and move ...

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.