Working Group 7
Interests:
How can non-teaching institutions help to inform curricula?
With increasing students (new and transfers), how can we fit more into a curriculum on an already
overworked faculty? What can we remove to get the most out of a curriculum?
How do we incorporate and assess life skills (teamwork, communication, etc.) in a science class?
In the move to transdiciplinary research, especially with younger faculty, how do how do we keep
traditional geology classes? Or how do we update the curriculum to reflect the faculty we have, not the
faculty we used to have?
How do we keep geo a prominent tropic on a multidisciplinary department (geo/ecology,
geo/geography, etc.)?
How do we define what a core class is vs. an elective?
How to chance student philosophy – students are scared of being wrong, stops learning
How to guide sci teachers on incorporating humanities, how to get info from students on what they
want/need, how to measure success
Tension between traditional geo and new env sci
University goals trickling into dept – core faculty retire, not replaced, moving to env sci – curriculum –
what should students know?
Grants v teaching
How can you compete with other larger state schools?
Improve comm skills and teamwork – interactive curriculum
Physical env role in inspiring students and creating learning envt
Global earth sciences – how does it relate to what’s happening in other countries? Are we going to
import our employees?
What is a core?
Why revise it?
Can one size fit all?
State v. private – state legislation demands a core in some places
Getting rid of redundancy
Spiral curriculum model – same principles over and over, talk to other faculty to see who needs to know
what down the line
If everyone has different policies at institution, need to focus on skills
Driver of core is economy – oil went away in 80s, stopped gearing it towards that
Depts that stick w min/pet and paleo do so bc alums/$$ say it’s a good idea
Required math/geo course – way to integrate hydro/atm, etc. into dept where they’re geo focused
Core:
Intro-phys
History of the Earth
Structure/tectonics
Min/pet
Sed strat
Field
Hydro
Skills:
Visual
Observation
Interpretation
Quantitative
Communication
Listening
Critical reading
Independent thinking
Integration of different sciences (phys, chem, etc.)
Spatial
Skills vs. facts – need to know a mineral before you can communicate
Core with flexibility
Big questions needed to be answered, not just particular core courses
Are the skills more important than the core? Want students to walk away with skills, do that through
core
Field techniques – go out once/wk, students can work with rocks, sets them apart
Required field camp? Maybe just field techniques + extra
Applied geology – 4 hrs once/wk, rotate faculty every week – get good integration and integration of
skills
Field experience gets students asking questions
Disconnect btw faculty knowing what the workforce wants
Students need to be able to work with content – need core for that reason
Software skills – PETRA, GIS
Professional preparation capstone class
Research – employers want that
Can bachelors students know how to teach themselves?
Metrics of core skills?
How to recognize successful curriculum
Above skills should be learning outcomes of courses, done with a geological lens
Teamwork
Depth – teach students how to learn something deeply then they can apply to other subjects
How do you get it to faculty who is already stressed?
Questions to answer:
Old days, needed depth of knowledge
W technology and instant access to info, what do we need know?
How do we use technology? – use modern technology to develop and answer important problems
Synthesis of information – have too much with technology – how do we filter?
Take deep time science and data, use that to make predictions about present and future
Understand relevance of geo
Powerpoint:
Embedding core skills in geo classes
Focus on larger, core questions that can be addressed through classes, maybe not core classes
themselves
Afternoon session:
Math
Comprehensional math is difficult in some regions – some regions have students coming in from schools
that don’t teach math well, so can’t catch up in university
Some states have requirements – year of math in TX (doesn’t have to be calc)
Depts have different tracks on how much math
Bottleneck at Y2 colleges is math
Some students taking math at community colleges to take easier course
Y2 students avoiding math/chem at CC, can’t place when they get to Y4
Everyone’s avoiding math until the last minute
UT has requirement that you need to get through certain amount of math, etc. to enter – need to be
ready to take calc to get into JSG
Do we need calc? Political ramifications of doing that
Why aren’t students taking stats? Maybe instead? How to incentivize that…
Stats for geo instead of regular stats class?
Calc doesn’t seem to be a problem with employment, but is for grad school
Which of these are needed and why?
Applied math
Calc
Linear algebra
Diff eq?
If you require physics, need calc
What are you teaching in your major? Does is need math?
Tailoring math for geo – don’t need imaginary numbers, etc.
Adding classes sometimes makes students stay longer – pushback from admin
What is the student’s goal? Flexible requirements based on the goal
Introduce math in 100 level classes, don’t wait until later classes
Computation vs. math
Programming skills needed more and more
BA for math-light, BS for math-heavy (grad school)
How do we tailor curricula to specific universities depending on student skill level
Can we have one set of math classes for geo? Linear algebra/stats for big datasets, calc for geophys, etc.
Data analysis course where you get a bit of everything? – need faculty who would teach it
When do you know you need to revise your curriculum?
Best practices list – stakeholders = faculty, students, alums, employers
What is the future? Waiting until employers leave and students don’t enroll?
NSF wants more unified earth science – EarthCube
Day 2
Where are we?
Where do we want to go?
How do we get there?
Flipped classrooms – possible GSA workshop on flipped classrooms to get consensus
Core – one size doesn’t fit all, true of flipped classrooms too
Hybrid and online flipped classrooms
Traditional teaching methods?
Different places in intro vs. higher level
Varies by place
Smaller pool will teach upper level courses – lots of faculty input at lower level, so upper level
dependent on individual teacher
Challenges – class sizes, reward systems, upper v lower level
Factions of geosci teachers – ones who believe in teaching, ones who are researchers first
Younger vs. older faculty members
Campus wide teaching workshops – should tap into institutional things
Incentives? Small pots of money? Promotions/salary raises?
Unionized faculty have copyrighted learning materials if they use uni IT – it belongs to provost, not
faculty
Metrics driven enhancement – annual evaluation means workshop is included
Same ideas for past 25 years – how do we move forward
Faculty need to see if their students in particular are learning – can have good teachers with old
technology, need to use technology effectively
How do you show that technology is better?
Pre and post info on performance, attitude
How do you become a better teacher when you have to write grants, etc.?
Action item – get people who know what tools exist and how to use it to give workshops – maybe
community mentoring plan?
Have certain individuals come to dept and teach general geosci teaching tools
Also have it on a subdiciplinary level – structural geo workshops, etc.; peer mentoring – ask NSF for $$
Maybe just have teacher exchange among profs who teach same subject – webinar?
In class observation
Using technology to improve peer-peer mentoring
MOOCs – use someone else’s MOOC to get teaching ideas
We should take one as a community to get an idea of what it’s like – we know what in class learning is
like, we need to know what this form of learning is like if we’re going to teach that way
Often have more interaction with peers in an online course (student observation) than in regular course
The Chronicle has good teaching tips, ideas on MOOCs, etc.
Attention spans of younger students – students have changed, how do teachers change with it?
Need to change next generation of faculty – probs not able to change 30 yr teachers that are
entrenched in the system
Classes taught by non-faculty
Get undergrads to help with class development – what will work for them and their peers? – get young
students
Maybe make workshops for undergrads to teach them how to help and develop course
CU found that dept needs to buy in, can’t just be individual faculty members
2Y – makes teaching more fun and successful – promote this aspect of it
Demonstrate it makes it easier to teach – needed for R1 where grants are the priority
Maybe promote when teacher has to teach new class – often not going to change class once it’s
developed
Has to be the chairs, not individual teachers – maybe make slides here to take to faculty meeting
Dept retreat every 5 years or so – talk about challenges to dept – emphasize teaching
Will people actually switch their courses to add Integrate modules?
Need personal promotion of these things – people aren’t really going to use it if it’s just something on a
website
Target strategic teaching plans – need more than just “excellent teaching” – specifics
How do we evaluate teaching? What do student evaluations mean?
Rate my professor – high marks go to easy A
Community wide initiative to get data on student evaluation
Assessment of learning vs assessment of teaching – institution and community wide
Asking alums what stuck to figure out long term assessment of learning
Testing on facts and content vs. can they think – need both, but what do they really need to recall
Reiteration
Technology
Formal training in software – doesn’t really exist anymore
Everyone knows how to Google, but can’t use web of science
We probably overestimate technological savvy – need to know how databases work before GIS
Can use single method things, can’t use complex software (GIS, Illustrator, Excel)
Lab vs. classroom teaching of programs
How do faculty find what they need?
Google image – how do we fix that?
Earth cube – supposed to be web based portal to earth science data – we need to use it in our
classrooms
State maps digitized
Need to be able to access as students, not just researchers
Where’s the payback for helping put data in? Need good, easy output for universal buy in
Need user focus groups, including students/teachers and not just researchers
Showcase data – promote specific data that actually have an outcome, not just messy data
For assessment, if dept has model for something that uni needs, talk to admin to volunteer your model,
then you already are ahead of the curve
Community makes it difficult to for cross disciplinary research – education researchers won’t team up
with geo faculty
Intermediate group notes
Need to include adjunct in solutions/workshops
Addition of ugrads as TAs means they have language of their peers
Hard to invest in newest technologies when they’re going to be obsolete in a year
Pedagogy = technology in some people’s view, need to differentiate
Bringing grads in on adding modules to classes gives them something for CV
How to incorporate active learning into workshop for teachers
K-12 Teaching
Online teaching, middle grade teachers taking series of classes to get earth sci cert
Courses that are for multiple subject teachers
Cali teachers have to take 2 lab sci and 1 elective (earth sci) for elementary – design lessons for teachers
Goal to get teachers less afraid of science – not drill content in, provide resources and confidence
Designed for what teachers need to teach elementary students
Elementary outreach – teachers focused on social, not math/science
Knowledge of child development for admin making curriculum and college faculty
In service teachers professional development – hard to get supervisors to tell them what they want
Informal opportunities – REUs for K-12 teachers
Being strategic for broader impacts
Why is GK12 gone? Already done, not doing again… political reasons
Common core – federal intrusion in state level – from governors, but people who don’t like it say this 
agencies not driving it, maybe societies can help?
Use big data for educational advancement
Earth science is now considered a lab science, wasn’t before – need the honors level course now to get
bright students to take it
What will it take current teachers to be able to teach NGSS? And how will they implement it?
A lot of states only require two science classes – how do you push earth science?
Earth science in charter schools to help?
Integrating literacy docs into K12 – good guidelines, hit a bunch, but often missing human/climate –
those are hot topics, need to get those in there
Sell teaching time as broader impacts
Day 3
Geobus – St. Andrews initiative, bus filled w geo teaching mat’ls, go to HS to teach, do expts, etc. – paid
for by state, local, and uni
Would need to be sci bus now that NGSS has integrated chem, phys, bio, an d geo
Level of geo teaching is often low level – do that before phys, etc. – maybe need to switch so it’s
capstone HS course
Complicated bc every state is different (NY need geo, CA thinking about it)
What can we do to broaden participation? – often encourage grad school, maybe we should encourage
HS teaching
UT can get 4 yr geo deg w a teaching deg, but school funding down, so don’t have job prospects, so
people have stopped with that track
Capstone course in geo in TX, but still not taking it – students going to oil
Depts have colloquia, bring in researchers, not teachers – maybe bring in teachers once-twice/yr to talk
to HS teachers to start dialog
Need to infiltrate K12 level – up to now, have been getting students from intro classes – need to get
them earlier
Why do some depts stay flat where some are exploding? States w/oil/gas are booming, others aren’t
Maybe a hook w env in places where oil industry doesn’t exist
We should go to meetings for science HS teachers to represent
Grad students going into K12 to help, but how do we increase diversity?
Two problems – how do we get minority students in heterogeneous population, and when we have
institutions with lots of minority students, how do we hook them into geo instead of other topics?
Why do we want diversity? Want people from other backgrounds to expand thought outside the box
People turning down minorities bc they don’t necessarily think they’re “the best”
Discussion focused on how do we fit into existing curriculum, which negates the idea that increasing
diversity brings in other voices
Maybe restructure intro classes to be more applied to intercity challenges – instead of earthquakes, do
building engineering for structure – looks like it applies within city, not just outside
Only every see pictures of countryside, need to show pics of rivers in town – get fluvial and env in one
shot
Need to teach students what jobs are out there – faculty don’t know bc they stayed in academia
Get AGI data into classroom
Women diversity is going up
Economic opportunity = reason for increasing diversity
Geoforce gets students interested, but they don’t get prepared w their science and math at their HS
Dealing w deep cultural issues, we’re not equipped to deal with them – need reinforcements, need
resources