On the Cutting Edge: Supporting Communities of Scholars in the Geosciences Using Topical Workshops and Web-Mediated

Resources and Services The Workshops• Combining real and virtual experiences• Web-mediated resources and services

o Support for workshop, logistics, information, FAQs, o Collections of resources, activities, opportunities using digital library technologieso Communication networks; working group support, listservs, shared workspaces

• Dissemination; beyond the workshop to larger community; recruitment of new participants and contributors• Leadership development; recruitment of next generation of leaders representing diverse parts of the community.

Emerging theme workshops move important new topics toward widespread implementation in undergraduate geoscience courses. Topics are chosen where

1) it is clear that incorporation of the emerging topic into geoscience courses is important and will significantly enhance student understanding about the Earth

2) a case can be made that a workshop will have a substantial impact in moving the content or pedagogy into broader use by geoscience faculty

Goals of emerging theme workshops:

•Enable a broader, collective understanding of the theme by engaging participants in sharing their expertise

•Document the state of the art: what is currently happening at the forefront of this topic? What are the best examples?

•Develop a vision that results in broad implementation in geoscience education: What are the barriers, missing pieces, or actions needed to make broad adoption possible?

•Develop an action plan that brings together the talents of the participants, builds on current opportunities, and addresses the critical needs

•Produce products for dissemination via the On the Cutting Edge website that support widening implementation in the geosciences.

David W. Mogk (Montana State University)Cathryn A. Manduca (Carleton College)

R. Heather Macdonald (College of William and MaryBarbara J. Tewksbury (Hamilton College)

Emerging Theme Workshops

http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/index.html CCLI-ND grant DUE-0127310

Teaching Biocomplexity in the Geosciences

Workshop Program Contribute Resources

Digital Resource Collections; available in NSDL and DLESE

Teaching Petrology in the 21st Century

Activities and Examples: community-based, w/ annotation

Registry of analytical equip- ment—sharing instrumentation

Working groups/listserv; support beyond workshop; recruitment

Impacts•Measured by formative and longitudinal survey instruments

•Creation of extensive digital library collections for NSDL and DLESE;

linking scientific content, data, tools, pedagogy, and assessment

•Vital communities of scholars; networking continues for both education

and research interests

•Evidence of curricular change: inquiry, discovery, active learning; sharing and learning from each other; from the participants--I have unabashedly used the ideas and specific exercises given by the many terrific people at the workshop… Before this workshop, I would have felt very, very guilty using other people's exercises and online presentations. But I think that they have really helped my students.

I have talked about the workshop, and the general teaching philosophy that most participants have, with many of my departmental colleagues and also with others on campus in a couple of our "teaching" groups… We have expanded our Teaching Scholars program here on campus and many of the things we are trying to implement are related to the Cutting Edge Workshops indirectly. The Workshops are great models for what can be done and so provide good starting points for new things we are doing here at UND. I’ve been teaching petrology for over 20 years, stuck in the

same rut of tradition (teaching it the way it was taught to me), guided by the same textbooks that offer the subject in the traditional way. I always felt that there was something wrong and unsatisfying about my class but could not identify what. I found that others had the same problem. Spending a week at the workshop thinking about nothing but teaching freed me up to think about the subject in new ways. I came away from the workshop with the decision to completely toss out what I had been doing, to free myself from the traditional mode of presentation that textbooks enforce, and to teach what I like best. At the workshop I turned into a flaming radical on a mission to overturn the traditions of petrology.

New materials became available, helping me with gaps in some of my course contents. I was able to use some new activities/exercises based directly from materials shared at the meeting. Finally, I have extended some of the calss discussions into areas that I barely touched in previous class offerings.

The workshop had a profound impact not only on my petrology course, but all of my courses. I am currently engaged in major revisions to all my courses, including the pedagogies that I employ, as well as assessment and goals.

I continue to use workshop materials as a source of inspiration to design new activities/labs for all my courses including petrology. The workshop reinforced my move toward more project based learning and away from traditional lecture format as an effective way to teach concepts. Again this is true for all my courses.

I am more determined than ever to incorporate hands-on learning activities throughout my lectures. I have developed classroom exercises based on the Kitchen Chemistry demo given during the workshop and the Magma M&M activity. These demos have spurred other demos that I have developed -- and my lab materials have changed to create a more cohesive research area focus -- thought that change is still ongoing.

Scholarship 2004: AGU theme session; 18 papers presented, numerous on-campus seminars and manuscripts in preparation!