Transitioning from Classroom to Online Courses

Initial Publication Date: March 12, 2020

Greetings Geoscience Educators,

As educational institutions respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, many geoscience educators are finding themselves needing to quickly transition from an in-person course to online teaching. To support the geoscience education community in this process, the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) and the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) are pulling together an evolving set of resources available here:

https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/teach_geo_online/index.html

The current resources include:

1. A community email discussion list where geoscience educators can share information with their peers specifically about the transition to online teaching. This is an appropriate place to share activities and materials you've found useful in teaching online geoscience courses, as well as to ask for help around specific needs: "How do I move a lab about x online...?"

We'll also be making announcements on this new list when significant new additions are made to the collections on the site.

2. A collection of activities and other materials designed for online use that you can adopt immediately. We expect this collection will grow as we identify other items in our large existing collections that are online-ready. We'll also be collecting new materials from the community, both via the email list and through online submission forms.

3. Pointers to guidance on online teaching best practices gathered from past workshops and events on that topic. We'll try to keep our focus on the issues and resources specific to teaching geoscience.

As we're all acutely aware, this situation and our response to it are evolving rapidly. The geoscience education community has a strong history of sharing our best work in support of moving the community forward. We hope this email list and the associated collections can help all of us support each other as we navigate through the challenge of the moment.

On behalf of
SERC and NAGT