RAPID: Teaching field geology without classes in the field - providing a robust capstone experience through digital resources

随着校园向远程学习过渡以应对COVID-19大流行，地球科学教育工作者面临着许多意想不到的挑战。其中最主要的是认识到，2020年春夏的体验式学习机会——包括传统的实地地质课程和作为本科专业顶点体验的营地——必须迅速向远程学习转变，否则就会被完全取消。这种需求是迫切的：这些经历是学生在整个本科生涯中应用所学知识的关键机会。由于大多数基于实地的顶点课程计划于2020年5月初开始，教师没有足够的时间获得开发和实施合适的虚拟替代方案所需的专业知识。解决这一危机的一个更有效的办法是协调集体行动，分享专门知识和活动。该项目通过一系列综合的专业、课程和数字基础设施发展计划，帮助我们的社区发展和组织这种集体势头。项目团队正在：(1)建立在社区内分享专业知识的途径，以提高设计和实施虚拟现场体验的能力；(2)共同概述在顶点课程现场经验中发展的期望学习成果和技能；(3)构建和填充一个新的在线活动、资源和材料集合，旨在满足这些学习成果；(4)审查和传播这一社区范围内努力的成果，作为教育上健全的虚拟实地营地的基础。通过这个项目开发的资源将免费提供给地球科学界。活动与社区衍生的学习成果相联系，并整合尖端技术，以加速地球科学学生接触专业中正在兴起的数字学习工具、资源和策略（例如，GoogleEarth、StraboSpot、ArcGIS PRO等）。该项目的成果还将有助于解决长期存在的挑战，即为那些通常被传统的现场学习方法和经验边缘化的人建立现场体验，促进包容性、可及性和公平性。事实上，这一努力将促进课程工具和机会的创造和扩展，帮助地球科学学生克服参与的障碍（例如，身体残疾、经济问题、文化耻辱或家庭责任），帮助减少与传统的、基于实地的经验相关的新奇空间，并最终使学生在进入实地之前建立相关技能和信心。为应对COVID-19大流行，促进传统野外营地快速过渡到虚拟替代方案的建议方法是，支持教师团队开发高质量、同行评审的虚拟/在线活动，这些活动可以在在线信息交换所中轻松发现，并被任何教师整合到替代的顶级体验中。这个过程的第一步是通过一系列的网络研讨会来发展一个专家社区，其中包括现场教师。在全国地球科学教师协会的帮助下，这些网络研讨会探讨了与越来越多的夏季野外课程取消相关的挑战，确认了形势的紧迫性，并衡量了合作开发虚拟野外教学新模块的兴趣。项目团队正在与全国地球科学教师协会协调，为9个工作组建立基于网络的工作空间：(1)学习目标和实地经验评估；(2)与课堂相关的虚拟实地考察；(3)建立以社区为基础的虚拟野外营地；(4)虚拟水文地质/环境现场体验；(5)虚拟地球物理场经验；(6)海洋地质/沉积学野外经验；(7)使用虚拟世界技术；(8)增强虚拟现场体验的数字化工具；(9)非野外营地顶点体验。项目团队正在举办为期一天的研讨会，以成功的“在前沿”（由全国地球科学教师协会和科学教育资源中心开展的合作专业发展项目）“建设强大的地球科学部门”项目为基础，利用逆向设计方法提炼出一套新的社区衍生的学习成果清单。这些新的学习成果满足了虚拟和实地的顶点体验，并为争论这些课程与研究生院课程、专业执照委员会和潜在雇主的同等性提供了基础，受流行病相关课程变化影响的学生将在未来遇到这些课程。有了这些新的学习成果，工作组可以迅速开发新的高质量课程材料，提供虚拟顶点体验，以满足为应对COVID-19大流行而实施的远程学习教学法的需求。然后，新的学习成果将指导工作组编写、开发和审查新的在线活动集合。项目团队和工作小组的领导可以通过这些工作小组聘请范围广泛的指导者，将指导者与在其专业知识范围内开发活动的努力相匹配，并从材料的潜在用户那里收集反馈。新的活动将包括他们所涉及的学习成果和技能，并上传到Teach the Earth网站上的可搜索集合，该网站是由科学教育资源中心托管的全国地球科学教师协会地球教育资源门户网站。这个网站有完善的活动提交协议和构建可搜索集合所需的基础设施。采用既定标准的两级同行评议将评估科学的准确性；目标、活动和评估的一致性；教学效果;鲁棒性（所有课程组件的可用性和可靠性）；而网页的完备性为活动的成功实施提供了保证。每个活动都将连接到一个概述页面，该页面介绍了学习目标、相关的教学技巧和策略，以及所需的其他资源。这些页面将帮助教师快速选择满足其特定顶点课程学习成果的活动集。支持本项目的资金由EAR构造计划和地球科学部提供。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Geoscience educators are facing a number of unexpected challenges as campuses transition to distance learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Principal among these is the realization that opportunities for experiential learning during spring and summer 2020 – including traditional, field-based geologic courses and camps used as capstone experiences for undergraduate majors – must rapidly make an unprecedented shift to distance learning or be cancelled altogether. The need is urgent: these experiences are critical opportunities for students to apply what they have learned throughout their undergraduate career. With most field-based capstones scheduled to begin in early May, 2020, there is not enough time for instructors to gain the expertise needed to develop and implement suitable virtual alternatives. A much more effective approach for addressing this crisis is coordinating a collective action to share expertise and activities. This project is helping our community develop and organize this collective momentum through an integrated series of professional, curricular, and digital infrastructure development initiatives. The project team is: (1) building avenues for sharing expertise within the community to enhance capacity for designing and implementing virtual field experiences; (2) collectively outlining the desired learning outcomes and skills that are developed during capstone field experiences; (3) constructing and populating a new online collection of activities, resources, and materials designed to meet those learning outcomes; and (4) reviewing and disseminating the products of this community-wide effort as a foundation for an educationally robust, virtual field camp. Resources being developed through this project will be freely available to the geoscience community. Activities are being tied to the community-derived learning outcomes and integrate cutting-edge technologies to accelerate geoscience students’ exposure to digital learning tools, resources, and strategies that are rising in the profession (e.g., GoogleEarth, StraboSpot, ArcGIS PRO, etc.). The outcomes of this project will also help address the long-standing challenge of building field experiences that promote inclusivity, accessibility, and equity for those who are commonly marginalized by traditional field learning methods and experiences. Indeed, this effort will foster the creation and expansion of curricular tools and opportunities that can help geoscience students overcome barriers to participation (e.g., physical disabilities, financial concerns, cultural stigmas, or family obligations), help to reduce the novelty space associated with traditional, field-based experiences, and ultimately allow students to build relevant skills and confidence before going to the field.The proposed approach to facilitating a rapid transition to virtual alternatives for traditional field camp in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is to support groups of faculty in developing high-quality, peer-reviewed virtual/online activities that can be easily discovered in an online clearinghouse and integrated into an alternative capstone experience by any instructor. The first step in this process is to develop a community of expertise through a series of webinars involving field instructors. With help from the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, these webinars explore the challenges associated with the growing number of cancelled summer field courses, confirmed the urgency of the situation, and gauged interest in collaboratively developing new modules for virtual field instruction. The project team is coordinating with the National Association of Geoscience Teachers to establish web-based work spaces for nine working groups: (1) Learning objectives & assessment for field experiences; (2) Virtual class-related field trips; (3) Developing a community-based, virtual field camp; (4) Virtual hydrogeology/environmental field experiences; (5) Virtual geophysical field experiences; (6) Marine geology/sedimentology field experiences; (7) Working with virtual world technologies; (8) Digital tools for enhancing virtual field experiences; and (9) Non-field camp capstone experiences. The project team is hosting a one-day workshop based on the successful On the Cutting Edge (a cooperative professional development program run by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers and the Science Education Resource Center) Building Strong Geoscience Departments Program to distill a new set of community-derived list of learning outcomes using a backward design approach. These new learning outcomes satisfy both virtual and field-based capstone experiences and provide a basis for arguing the equivalency of these programs to graduate school programs, professional licensure boards, and potential employers, that students affected by pandemic-related program changes will encounter in the future. With these new learning outcomes in hand, working groups quickly develop new high-quality curricular materials for virtual capstone experiences to meet the needs of distance learning pedagogies put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new learning outcomes will then guide working groups in the compilation, development, and review of a new collection of online activities. The project team and working group leaders can engage a broad range of instructors through these working groups, match instructors with efforts to develop activities within their expertise, and collect feedback from potential users of the material. New activities will include the learning outcomes and skills they address and be uploaded to a searchable collection on the Teach the Earth website, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers' portal to Earth education resources that is hosted by the Science Education Resource Center. This website has well-established protocols for activity submission and the infrastructure needed to build searchable collections. Two levels of peer review using established rubrics will assess scientific accuracy; alignment of goals, activity, and assessment; pedagogical effectiveness; robustness (usability and dependability of all lesson components); and completeness of the web page for the activity to ensure successful implementation. Each activity will be connected to an overview page that introduces the learning objectives, associated pedagogical tips and strategies, and other resources as needed. These pages will help instructors to quickly select sets of activities that satisfy the learning outcomes of their particular capstone programs.Funds to support this project are provided by the EAR Tectonics Program and the Division of Earth Sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.