Collaborative Research: On the Cutting Edge: A Community Resource Transforming Geoscience Education

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This project is expanding the work of the award-winning "On the Cutting Edge" program, and is continuing to provide a comprehensive, discipline-wide professional development program for current and future geoscience faculty. It is attempting to engage, through participation in face-to-face or online Cutting Edge workshop experiences, about half of the total number of US geoscience faculty in order to achieve a widespread and sustainable impact. It is expanding the segment of the faculty population who have had a first workshop experience, and is also providing geoscience faculty with advanced opportunities for learning that are also encouraging repeated participation in Cutting Edge activities, enabling ongoing learning, and resulting in increased changes in teaching practice among participants. The project is continuing an annual series of face-to-face workshops and is adding six virtual or hybrid workshops or other virtual events. It is introducing a number of new elements including 1) a stronger focus on improving introductory geoscience courses and increasing participation of faculty from two-year colleges, 2) revising the project website to include expanded community-authored and community-reviewed resources as well as improved methods for searching and obtaining previously submitted materials, 3) developing structured activities aimed specifically at enlarging and improving accessibility to the website, 4) incorporating a full research and evaluation program that not only is providing formative feedback to improve the program, but also is extending evaluation to assess the effect that the program has on teaching practice and student learning among the broader geoscience community. In particular, the project is attempting to determine what impact repeated participation in geoscience professional development has on individual teaching practice and on geoscience education nationwide, and what impact participation in an innovative and research-based community of geoscience educators has on faculty teaching effectiveness. The project is developing and disseminating best practices for the geosciences, however, many project activities are also being transferred to other STEM disciplines through publications, presentations, workshops, and through collaborations developed with SENCER and other organizations.