Carleton College
The Carleton College workplan for DLESE Community Services indicates that we will build, maintain, and evaluate three sites for faculty teaching undergraduate geoscience:
Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences
Using Data in the Classroom
Preparing Teachers to Teach Earth Science
All three sites are now live with substantial content. This year our goals are to:
- Build use of the sites by undergraduate faculty
- Enhance the content of the sites
- Evaluate the sites
- Engage the research community in contributing to and using the sites
Workplan:
Building use of the sites by undergraduate faculty
- Develop a trifold brochure describing these sites and the MSU Integrating Research and Education site and distribute via professional society meetings and other speaking opportunities
- Presentations at GSA and AGU
- Publications in Journal of Geoscience Education and EOS
- Work with advisory groups
- Summer workshop for 30 faculty on teaching quantitative skills in the geosciences will showcase site and its use as part of workshop preparation and discussion
Enhance content of sites
- Continued gathering of examples by SERC staff for all sites
- Engage 5 faculty in developing modules on teaching upper division geoscience on high priority topics outlined in this years workshop
- Continued development of mathematical concept and geoscience context page pairs for introductory geoscience
- Redesign of Using Data site with specific focus on
- Enhancing discovery of data sets (as per DAWG and other discussions)
- Linking data sets, teaching materials, and pedagogic information
- Featuring and integrating work done by EET, Starting Point, Integrating Research and Educaiton (Mogk Community Services Work) and DLESE Data Services
- Development of Developers site (as per DAWG discussions)
This work will involve review and revision of existing metadata, development of datasheets to carry extended metadata, development of selected examples to illustrate data sheet use and enable evaluation, and site redesign to support implementation. We anticipate the developers site will employ discussion tools, and hold intermediate data products including data subsets with educational value.
- Development of examples by summer workshop participants
Evaluate Sites
Continued use of web-metrics to monitor usage of modules and pages
Pop-up survey to identify user population and common uses
Walk through-interview protocol, survey instrument and focus groups to understand usability, search behavior, and use. This work will include studies necessary to test and stabilize data and quant skills vocabularies.
Convene advisory groups to obtain feedback on site content (teacher preparation group will be drawn from leaders in geoscience teacher education including participants in 2002 workshop; quantitative skills group will include faculty teaching undergraduates, faculty teaching graduate students, and graduate students; using data site will work with DAWG and focus groups rather than convene a separate group)
Phone interview protocol to understand impact (supplemented by focus groups and on-line survey as appropriate)
Evaluation of Teach the Earth portal to understand issues related to movement across multiple sites
Engage the research community in contributing to and using the sites
Work with research faculty and data providers in development of data sheet contents
Quantitative Skills advisory group will bring together graduate faculty, undergraduate faculty, and graduate students to discuss how the quantitative aspects of undergraduate education for geoscience education could be enhanced to facilitate preparation of graduate students and smooth the undergraduate/graduate transition. The advisory group will identify priority areas for enhanced skill development and recommend resources that should be added to the site. This group may yield editors for modules addressing priority needs and will be engaged in review of new site content.
Quantitative Skills workshop will bring together a larger group of undergraduate faculty to discuss what we know about teaching quantitative skills, strategies for enhancing students skills, and to develop and review new activities for the website. If there is strong interest in this workshop, we will increase the size by decreasing support per participant.
Collaborate with CHRONOS on workshop creating teaching materials using CHRONOS data for distribution via Using Data and CHRONOS sites 
