NAGT Sponsored Programs
Building Strong Geoscience Departments
Project PIs: Cathy Manduca (Carleton College, SERC), Heather Macdonald (College of William and Mary), Geoff Feiss (College of William and Mary), Randy Richardson (University of Arizona)
Building Strong Geoscience Departments is a project focused on helping geoscience departments adapt and prosper in a changing and challenging environment. Through workshops, a website, and sessions at professional meetings, this project aims to stimulate discussions and disseminate community expertise on topics such as approaches to core content and curriculum, retaining and recruiting top faculty and students, and maintaining the department as a valued institutional partner.
Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Netweork (CLEAN) Pathway
Project PIs: Tamara Ledly (TERC), Frank Niepold (NOAA), Susan Buhr (CIRES), Cynthia Howell (NREL), Cathy Manduca (Carleton College, SERC)
The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network CLEAN Pathway project will build on the efforts of the Climate Literacy Network and the establishment of the US Global Change Research Program to steward a broad collection of educational resources that facilitate students teachers and citizens becoming climate literate and informed about the climates influence on you and society and your influence on climate. The focus of our efforts will be to integrate the effective use of the resources across all educational levels with a particular focus on the middle-school through undergraduate levels grades 6-16 as well as to citizens through formal and informal education venues and communities.
DWEL: Digital Water Education Library
Project PIs: Ed Geary (UCAR), Bryan Aivazian (Natrona School District), Tammy Sumner (University of Colorado - Boulder), and Shirley Ireton (Silver Spring, MD)
DWEL provides easy access to high quality digital resources related to the science, policy and economics of water. Experienced, practicing K-12 teachers who know the needs of their students and their peers are reviewing and selecting these exemplary resources, which best support teaching along core science concepts. The discovery tool allows users to search the library catalog by content area, grade level, resource type and by national science standards. Resources in the collection include high quality graphics, animations, visualizations, databases, simulations, and text resources.
EET: Earth Exploration Toolbook
Project PIs: Tamara Shapiro Ledley (Center for Science Teaching and Learning, TERC) and Cathy Manduca (Carleton College)
EET provides step-by-step instructions for using Earth science datasets and scientific tools in educational settings. Chapters walk users through case studies in which they use data and analysis tools to explore important issues and concepts in Earth system science. Chapters are designed for use by K-12 teachers, undergraduate faculty, and their students. Each chapter features specific datasets and analysis or visualization tools, and provides enough experience and in-depth knowledge of the resource to enable an educator to use it, apply it to other teaching contexts, or help students use the resource to explore and investigate aspects of the Earth system.
Earth Learning Idea
Project PIs: Chris King (Keele University), Peter Kennett (Keele University), and Elizabeth Devon (University of Bath)
Earth Learning Idea will publish a new idea for teaching Earth science every week during 2008—the International Year of Planet Earth. The ideas are specifically designed for classrooms with minimal resources - anywhere on Earth, while encouraging interactive teaching and the development of thinking and investigational skills in pupils. The ideas are aimed primarily at pre-service teacher trainers, as they will reach the widest teacher audience, but also welcomes interested teachers to subscribe. Each Earth Learning Idea will be accompanied by a blog, to encourage the development of a global discussion network of those interested in Earth science education. The Earth Learning Ideas will appear one per month during September—December and one per week thereafter and are being produced by voluntary effort with no funding.
Geoscience in Two-Year Colleges
Project PIs: Bob Filson (Green River Community College), Laura Guertin (Penn State Brandywine), Kaatje Kraft (Mesa Community College), Heather Macdonald (College of William and Mary)
Two-year colleges (2YC) play an important role in the science and mathematics education of undergraduate students, enrolling approximately 45% of all undergraduate students in the country. With their diverse student populations, 2YC also have an important role in broadening participation in STEM fields including the geosciences. They also play an important role in contributing to the geoscience workforce, teaching science to pre-service K-12 teachers, and producing earth-science literate citizens. A planning workshop in the summer of 2010 will bring together faculty from two-year colleges, four-year colleges and universities, and representatives from professional societies and organizations to learn more about geoscience in TYC and their potential for increasing diversity in the geosciences and to discuss how to best support this important community.
The Math You Need, When You Need It
Project PIs: Eric Baer (Highline Community College) and Jennifer Wenner (University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh)
The Math You Need, When You Need It modules cover quantitative topics that are important in introductory geoscience courses. Each topic includes a page for the instructor, quantitative information for the students, a set of practice problems and culminates in an on-line quiz that is automatically graded and submitted to the instructor. The project is designed to give students the quantitative knowledge that they need, just before they need to use it in their concurrent geoscience course. This program includes pre- and post-testing and self-paced modules.
MARGINS Data in the Classroom
Project PIs: Geoff Abers (Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory), Andy Goodliffe (University of Alabama), Andrew Goodwillie (Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory), Rosemary Hickey-Vargas (Florida International University), Cathy Manduca (Carleton College), Jeff Ryan (University of South Florida), Don Reed (San Jose State University)
The MARGINS program has been granted a NSF-CCLI grant to develop web-based undergraduate classroom teaching modules in cooperation with the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College. As a part of this collaboration, a series of workshops for researchers and educators is underway. These workshops facilitate the creation of mini-lessons which are learning materials that repurpose data and resources developed through MARGINS for use in examining earth processes in undergraduate classrooms from a multidisciplinary perspective.
On the Cutting Edge: Professional Development for Geoscience Faculty
Project PIs: Heather Macdonald (College of William and Mary), Cathy Manduca (Carleton College), David Mogk (University of Montana - Bozeman), and Barbara Tewksbury (Hamilton College)
The NAGT/DLESE On the Cutting Edge project helps geoscience faculty stay up-to-date with both geoscience research and teaching methods. The workshop series and website combine to provide professional development opportunities, resources, and opportunities for faculty to interact on-line and in person with colleagues around the world who are focused on improving their teaching. An integral aspect of the project is development of an expanding community of geoscience educators with a strong and diverse leadership.
Starting Point: Teaching Entry Level Geoscience
Project PIs: Cathy Manduca (Carleton College), Mary Savina (Carleton College), and Dorothy Merritts (Franklin & Marshall College)
The Starting Point project is exploring the ability of on-line resources to catalyze improvements in undergraduate teaching. The goal is to develop a resource that intimately integrates pedagogy with teaching resources and fully supports a virtual community of educators.
Teach the Earth: A SERC Portal for Geoscience Faculty
Teach the Earth is a portal to all of the geoscience teaching materials and pedagogical information that has been collected through the many projects in which the Science Education Resource Center of Carleton College has been a participant.
Web-based Interactive Landform Simulation (WILSIM)
WILSIM is an educational tool that helps undergraduate students understand how landscapes evolve under different scenarios. The site includes a pre-test, post-test, and a user survey to evaluate how well the simulator achieve its goals.
Workshop on Atmospheric Science and Climate Literacy
Project PIs: Roberta Johnson (UCAR)
The goal of the workshop is to develop a consensus framework for enhancing atmospheric science and climate literacy in our nation that is informed by the participation of teachers, scientists, informal educators, policy makers, and parents. The workshop will build on the work of numerous organizations and subgroups that have sought to define standards and benchmarks for science education in general and, more specifically, to identify key concepts and linkages among weather, climate, and ocean literacy. A consensus framework will be drafted during the workshop and will be revised based upon further review and feedback from participants in meetings of the nation's leading goescience and science education societies, such as AGU, AMS, NSTA. As a result of broad community involvement, the framework will establish a foundation on which decision makers may more effectively shape the nation's priorities and strategies for research and education and prepare a diverse population of scientists to serve our atmospheric and climate endeavors for decades to come.