Transforming Museums and Colleges into an Effective Earth Science Partnership: Creating Student Explorations of Museum Exhibits for Undergraduate Education

虽然科学博物馆是中学地球科学教育的重要资源，但在本科阶段，它们仍未得到充分利用。该方案旨在通过在明尼苏达科学博物馆和明尼苏达大学之间建立合作伙伴关系来解决这一问题，将博物馆资源与区域本科课程相结合。目前正在建造、评估和修订两个关于互动式博物馆展品的实验室模块。学生可以独立完成这些模块，而无需教师或博物馆工作人员的任何支持。这种“即插即用”的设计使模块能够以最小的努力融入现有的课程。一个模块探索动物的骨骼设计如何反映它们的生活方式和进化谱系，而另一个模块则利用了一种新的可视化技术。“雨表”技术允许学生互动地模拟地球表面任何部分的水流。这使他们能够将河流雕刻景观中的流量与城市环境中的流量进行对比，或者将非河流过程（如冰川地区或喀斯特地形）改变的景观进行对比。每个模块还针对常见的误解，并明确讨论相关科学模型的基础、设计和局限性。这项活动的智力价值在于，它可以改变博物馆和本科课程的合作方式，创造一种强有力的教育伙伴关系，以改进和扩展传统的地球科学课程。这两个模块的评估活动将超越其教育功效，记录学生的先验知识，识别错误观念，并制定有效的方法来纠正错误观念。以“雨表”为例，评估还将决定与传统地图相比，可视化系统本身如何改变学生对水流的理解。虽然侧重于地球科学，但这些教育研究成果与科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）教育的所有领域都相关。在明尼阿波利斯-圣。在保罗地区，有许多本科院校可以立即采用拟议的模块，但拟议项目的更广泛影响是，它的概念、实践和产品可以在任何拥有科学博物馆的城市地区的广泛学科中进行调整。此外，由于这些模块是为入门级本科课程设计的，高中课程、在家学习的学生、教育工作者研讨会和普通公众也可以使用它们，明尼苏达科学博物馆已经有了基础设施，可以向更广泛的社区传播这些模块。最后，考虑到优点和影响，该提案将一种新的尖端可视化技术引入到教育项目中。尽管“雨表”背后的技术具有巨大的潜力，可以让学生展示和操作大量的数据集，但与任何新技术一样，除非有方法将其整合到现有的教育计划中，否则它的教育潜力无法充分实现。本提案正在制订、试验和传播这些方法。

Geology (42) Although science museums are a remarkable resource for secondary earth science education, at the undergraduate level they remain underutilized. This proposal seeks to remedy this by creating a partnership between the Science Museum of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota to integrate museum resources with regional undergraduate programs. Two laboratory modules, built about interactive museum exhibits, are being constructed, assessed and revised. Students are able to complete these modules independently without any support from instructors or museum staff. This 'plug and play' design allows the modules to be incorporated into existing curriculums with minimal effort. One module explores how animals' skeletal design reflects their lifestyle and evolutionary lineage, while the other utilizes a new visualization technology. 'Rain Table' technology allows students to interactively simulate water flow across any part of the Earth's surface. This allows them to contrast flow across fluvial-sculpted landscapes with flow in urban settings or across landscapes modified by non-fluvial processes, such as glacial areas or karst terrain. Each of these modules also targets common misconceptions and explicitly discusses the basis, design and limitations of the relevant scientific models.The intellectual merit of the proposed activity is that it can transform the way museums and undergraduate programs collaborate, creating a potent educational partnership to improve and expand traditional earth science curriculums. Assessment activities for both modules will move beyond their educational efficacy to document students' prior knowledge, identify misconceptions and develop effective methods to correct misconceptions. In the case of 'Rain Table' assessment will also determine how the visualization system itself alters students' comprehension of water flow compared to traditional maps. Although focused on earth science, these educational research outcomes have relevance to all areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. Within the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, there are a score of undergraduate institutions that can immediately adopt the proposed modules, but the broader impacts of the proposed project is that its concept, practices and products can be adapted across a broad spectrum of disciplines in any urban area hosting a science museum. Moreover, as the modules are designed for the introductory undergraduate level, high school programs, home-schooled students, educator workshops and the general public can also utilize them and the Science Museum of Minnesota already has infrastructure in place to disseminate the modules to this broader community. Finally, for both merit and impact, the proposal introduces a new cutting-edge visualization technology to educational programs. Although the technology behind the 'Rain Table' holds tremendous potential as a way for students to display and manipulate immense data sets, as with any new technology, its educational potential cannot be fully realized until methods exist to integrate it into existing educational programs. These methods are being produced, tested and disseminated by this proposal.