Creating an Academic Community to Foster Curiosity and Discovery in Introductory Geoscience Classes

AbstractThis project creates a Teaching and Learning Community（TLC）combining their professional and curriculum development efforts to improve instruction in geology，meteorology and oceanography lab courses.这个项目创建了一个由教师、研究生和高级本科生组成的教学社区（TLC），他们将自己的专业和课程发展努力结合起来，以提高地质学、气象学和海洋学实验室课程的教学。TLC还致力于通过转移实验室注册学生开发的技能来改善学生在相关讲座课程中的学习。 该项目开发，调整和完善实验室材料，不仅包含一致的探究式学习（IBL）方法，真实世界的数据和与学生相关的问题，而且还明确解决科学的过程。 该项目的工作得到了配备计算机的地球科学勘探实验室（GEL）的促进，该实验室部分通过该项目开发，为学生提供了收集自己的数据，使用计算机工具分析，可视化，解释，综合和展示其结果和解释的机会。 这有助于学生在大学生涯的早期阶段培养有价值的思维和沟通技能。 评估计划包括形成性和总结性的组成部分，跟踪学生的学习和态度，以及教师和研究生谁参与教学实验室课程的专业发展。 该项目的成果包括广泛传播的实验室手册，积极传播项目成果的国家讲习班，以及传播更广泛的STEM社区感兴趣的评估结果。

AbstractThis project creates a Teaching and Learning Community (TLC) composed of faculty, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates who are combining their professional and curricular development efforts to improve instruction in geology, meteorology and oceanography lab courses. The TLC is also working to improve student learning in associated lecture courses via the transfer of skills developed by students enrolled in the labs. The project develops, adapts, and refines lab materials that not only incorporate a consistent inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach, real-world data, and problems relevant to students, but also explicitly address the process of science. The project work is being facilitated by a computer-equipped Geoscience Exploration Laboratory (GEL), developed in part via this project, which is providing students with opportunities to collect their own data, use computer tools to analyze, visualize, interpret, synthesize and present their results and interpretations. This is helping students to develop valuable thinking and communication skills at an early stage in their university careers. The evaluation plan consists of both formative and summative components that track student learning and attitudes as well as the professional development of faculty and graduate students who are involved in teaching the laboratory courses. The outcomes of the project include a widely disseminated lab manual, a national workshop that actively disseminates the project results, and the dissemination of evaluation results that are of interest to the larger STEM community.