Data-rich Societally-situated Undergraduate Teaching Resources and Instructor Professional Development for Geoscience Classrooms and Field Courses
Abstract
The NSF-funded GEodesy Tools for Societal Issues (GETSI) project is developing teaching resources and instructor professional development opportunities that emphasize a broad range of geodetic data and quantitative skills applied to societally important issues such as natural hazards, water resources, and climate change. The resources consist of modules for introductory through majors-level courses in classrooms and field settings. The types of data include: GPS, InSAR, gravity, sea level and ice altimetry, lidar, and structure from motion, as well as a variety of non-geodetic methods from ground water levels to temperature. Entire modules can take 2-3 weeks of course time or individual units and activities can be used over just 1-2 class periods. Existing modules are available online via serc.carleton.edu/getsi/ and include "Surface process hazards", "Ice mass and sea level changes", "Imaging active tectonics with InSAR and lidar", "Measuring water resources with GPS, gravity, and traditional methods", "GPS, strain, and earthquakes", "Analyzing High resolution topography with TLS and SfM", and "High precision position with static and kinematic GPS/GNSS". Another six modules are currently in development on topics from volcanic hazards to flooding. Modules were designed by teams of faculty and content experts and underwent rigorous classroom testing and review using the process developed by the Science Education Resource Center's InTeGrate Project (serc.carleton.edu/integrate). All modules are aligned to Earth Science and Climate literacy principles. To promote successful instructor use of the data-rich modules, GETSI has run seven in-person short courses with 170 total participants and five webinars totalling nearly 200 people. Participant satisfaction is typically 9 out 10. Many more short courses and webinars will be conducted over the next two years. GETSI collaborating institutions are UNAVCO (which runs NSF's Geodetic Facility), Indiana University, Mt San Antonio College, and Idaho State University. Other partners include National Science Teachers Association and American Geophysical Union.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMED53C..04P
- Keywords:
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- 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0845 Instructional tools;
- EDUCATIONDE: 1930 Data and information governance;
- INFORMATICSDE: 1976 Software tools and services;
- INFORMATICS