Integrate > About this Project > Creation of Teaching Materials

Creating Teaching Materials and Examples of their Use

Jump to: Materials Development Teams | Types of Materials to be Developed | Format of Teaching Materials

The first element of InTeGrate is to develop a new breed of teaching materials that can be utilized in general education courses, core courses within geoscience majors, courses designed for other majors including environmental studies, social science, engineering, and other sciences, and courses for interdisciplinary programs.

These materials will be designed to:
  1. address one or more geoscience related grand challenges facing society,
  2. develop student ability to address interdisciplinary problems,
  3. improve student understanding of the nature and methods of geoscience and developing geoscientific habits of mind,
  4. make use of authentic and credible geoscience data to learn central concepts in the context of geoscience methods of inquiry, and,
  5. incorporate systems thinking.

Materials Development Teams

All InTeGrate teaching materials are developed and tested by teams of faculty drawn from at least three institutions. By engaging these faculty who teach different kinds of students in different types of institutional settings in collaboratively developing materials we strive to create robust, flexible materials that can be used effectively in a wide variety of settings. This is key to creating materials that can be adopted easily by faculty who are not involved in the development.

Each team develops and tests materials during a two year interval. In most cases, we anticipate that teams will be created in the spring with an intensive development taking place during the summer. Testing occurs during the following academic year and is followed by revision and publication of the materials. Teams meet face-to-face near the beginning of the development work and again after the completion of testing. Team members commit to participating in the collaborative design and development of the materials, piloting and testing these materials at their home institution, and revising and refining the materials based on the results of testing. In addition, they are responsible for completing a comprehensive set of documentation that supports other faculty in using the materials, including a description of the use of the materials in their own classrooms.

To support effective integration of scientific data, teams may have other types of members beyond the core faculty from three different institutions.

InTeGrate is producing tested materials that are effective in reaching their stated learning goals as well as meeting the projects overarching goals. To support development teams in meeting this high standard, each team works with a consultant drawn from the InTeGrate Assessment team. All materials must meet the criteria defined by the InTeGrate Curriculum Development and Refinement Rubric (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 38kB Jun17 13) before testing begins. This rubric encodes both the overarching goals of the project and research-based principles for effective instruction. All materials must include embedded assessments that can be used to measure student progress toward the stated learning goals. The assessment consultant's role is to provide expertise to help the team meet these requirements. The assessment consultant also helps the team make sense of the classroom testing results that form the basis for revising the materials before publication on the InTeGrate website.

Types of Materials to be Developed

Interested in developing materials? See the Get Involved site for more information and for the 2013 call for course and module authors.
InTeGrate materials development teams are working on two scales: modules and courses. Modules are topical units of instruction lasting longer than a week but less than a full term. If you have an idea for a module or course topic that fits with the goals of the InTeGrate project, you can submit your idea and propose authors.


The InTeGrate materials development effort will engage over 150 faculty from across the nation inluding no fewer than 25 faculty from two year colleges and minority serving institutions, including historically black colleges and universities and tribal colleges and universities. To ensure broad participation from the full spectrum of institutions across the nation, 75 positions will be filled using an application process. The balance of positions will be filled by invitation. The professional development program plays an important role in identifying both needed materials and potential team members.

Introductory geoscience modules/courses
 This effort, led by Dr. David McConnell at North Carolina State University, is developing a modular set of materials based on the literacy documents that are suitable for use in large face-to-face, blended, and distance introductory courses within geoscience departments. These modules can be organized in a variety of combinations to serve a range of introductory courses. Selection of introductory geoscience authors has occurred for the first and second years of the project. Check back in December for more information about the 2014 call for authors.

Teacher preparation modules/courses
Dr. Anne Egger at Central Washington University is leading an effort to develop a set of modules aimed at courses for pre-service teachers including both content courses (usually taught in science departments) and methods courses. The first and second sets of teacher preparation authors have been selected. Please check back in December for the 2014 call for authors.

Interdisciplinary general education courses and courses for majors
Dr. David Gosselin at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, is leading the development of a set of courses that are aimed at integrating geoscience concepts into teaching about societal issues outside of geoscience programs and integrating linkages to societal issues into upper division geoscience courses.

Interdisciplinary distance learning courses
Dr. Tm Bralower at Pennsylvania State University, is leading development of a suite of on-line courses emphasizing the grand challenges of climate change, energy, sea level rise, water supply and natural hazards. These courses will incorporate a focus on the use of predictive models to forecast changes and the impact of mitigation efforts. Taken together, these courses will support a Certificate of Excellence in Earth Science.

Materials for use in other majors

This effort will develop materials bringing geoscience literacy and skills to students in other majors including other STEM majors, social sciences, humanities, and professional programs such as business and pre-law. Materials development targets are being explored through a series of workshops designed to attract faculty from other natural and social sciences, humanities, and professional programs to identify opportunities to strengthen the geoscience component in their programs.

We anticipate three interdisciplinary teams will develop and test materials or courses based on the recommendations from each these workshops. See the call for authors if you are interested in applying.

Learn More about Past and Current Workshop Programming

Format of Teaching Materials

The courses and modules developed by the curriculum teams will be published on the InTeGrate site in a standardized format. This will include both detailed information for instructors on implementing the module as well as the supporting materials for their students. The instructor web pages include:

The student materials will take several forms:

InTeGrate materials are available at no cost under a creative commons license that encourages wide reuse and empowers educators to flexibly adapt the materials to meet their local needs. Copyright of original materials developed by InTeGrate is retained by the project.





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