Teaching intro geoscience workshop at AGU

Earlier this week, I received this message from Anne Egger, who is co-organizing two sessions and a workshop at AGU in December. I'm going to be speaking in the second session (and I'm looking forward to the poster session as well - the posters look interesting, and I like poster sessions for pedagogy discussions), but I'm not going to be at the meeting in time for the workshop. I found this summer's workshop very useful, though, and I expect that the one-day version will also be great.

Teaching Introductory Geoscience in the 21st Century

As part of the Cutting Edge program, we are offering a 1-day workshop on teaching introductory geoscience on Sunday , December 14 , in San Francisco, the day before the AGU Fall meeting begins.Many faculty have introductory courses in their teaching repertoires, and those courses span a wide range of subject areas, including physical and historical geology, environmental science, oceanography, natural hazards, and courses that follow a regional or topical theme. This workshop will bring together faculty from a wide variety of institutional settings and backgrounds with the common goal of sharing ideas about improving the pedagogy and content of all of our introductory geoscience courses. The 1-day workshop both builds on and serves to disseminate the results of an identically-titled workshop that took place July 14-17, 2008.

Conveners: Cathy Manduca and Anne Egger

DEADLINE TO REGISTER: Friday, November 21
NOTE: You do not need to be registered for the AGU meeting to attend this workshop.

More information about the workshop can be found here:
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/intro-agu08/overview.html

To register, go here:
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/intro-agu08/registration.html


Goals and Format
During this 1-day workshop, we will explore the following topics

• How can we maximize the long-term impact of our introductory courses?
• How do we engage students in the real process of science even at the introductory level?
• What are some approaches to designing a new course or breathing new life into an existing course?
• How can we make activities we currently use in our courses more effective?
• How do we approach challenges like teaching large courses, courses with no lab component, or courses in urban settings with nary an outcrop in sight?


The workshop format will include plenary talks, large and small group discussions, and time for planning changes to your own course and activities. In addition, all participants will contribute to development of the online collection of introductory teaching activities for the classroom, lab or field. In doing so, workshop attendees will consider what makes effective activities and assignments and will review and make suggestions for improving submitted materials.