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

地质学(42)尽管科学博物馆是中学地球科学教育的重要资源，但在本科生水平上，它们仍然没有得到充分利用。这项提案试图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纠正这一点，以将博物馆资源与地区性本科课程整合起来。正在建造、评估和修订两个关于博物馆互动展品的实验室单元。学生可以独立完成这些单元，而不需要任何教师或博物馆工作人员的支持。这种“即插即用”的设计使这些模块能够以最小的努力融入现有课程。其中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”技术允许学生交互地模拟流经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水流与城市环境中的水流或被非河流过程改变的景观(如冰川地区或喀斯特地形)中的水流进行对比。每个模块还针对常见的误解，明确讨论了相关科学模型的基础、设计和局限性。拟议活动的智力价值在于，它可以改变博物馆和本科课程合作的方式，创建一个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。这两个单元的评估活动将超越其教育功效，记录学生的先前知识，找出误解，并制定有效的方法来纠正误解。以《雨表》为例，与传统地图相比，评估还将决定可视化系统本身如何改变学生对水流的理解。虽然这些教育研究成果侧重于地球科学，但它们与科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)教育的所有领域都有相关性。在明尼阿波利斯-圣彼得堡。在保罗地区，有数十所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，其概念、做法和产品可以适用于任何拥有科学博物馆的城市地区的广泛学科。此外，由于这些模块是为本科入门课程设计的，高中课程、在家接受教育的学生、教育工作者工作坊和普通公众也可以使用它们，明尼苏达州科学博物馆已经建立了基础设施，向更广泛的社区传播这些模块。最后，出于优点和影响，该提案在教育项目中引入了一种新的尖端可视化技术。尽管“雨表”背后的技术具有巨大的潜力，可以让学生像任何新技术一样显示和操作海量数据集，但在找到将其整合到现有教育项目中的方法之前，它的教育潜力无法完全实现。这些方法是由这项提案产生、测试和传播的。

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.