Collaborative Research: Combining Real and Virtual Professional Development for Current and Future Geoscience Faculty

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Earth Systems Science (40)The National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) and the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) is offering a professional development program to improve the quality of undergraduate geoscience education. The program is designed to enhance the participants' content knowledge in emerging fields and promote exemplary teaching practices; develop effective on-line resources to support existing workshops; provide electronic versions of workshops to extend the influence of the workshops; and develop an active cohort of educators involved in further dissemination. The professional development program includes both emerging topics in geoscience and faculty development workshops. Two emerging topics workshops are being offered each year, one in an interdisciplinary field related to Earth systems and one in geoscience pedagogy. Mature topical workshops, based on successful previous work, include: course design workshops, workshops for early career faculty, and workshops for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows preparing for careers in academia. Web resources developed by the project provide a collection of background resources and are designed to engage participants in on-going discussion. The project also explores tutorials, synchronous discussion, and on-line courses for delivering workshop content. Participants in the workshops are expected to develop course materials based on the principle of actively engaging students in their own learning, test materials following the workshop, and ultimately contribute to the DLESE Collection and Community Center. Integration of workshop planning and web-resource development are combined in a unique on-line resource aimed at extending the workshop experience far beyond those who attend the face-to-face workshops and beyond the lifetime of the grant.