Collaborative Research: GP-IN: Transforming geoscience fieldwork into integrated, virtual education experiences

应对复杂全球挑战的成功解决方案超越了学科界限，需要整合不同领域的知识，使跨学科教育成为培训我国劳动力的迫切需要。很少有科学比地球科学更依赖整合，从能源勘探、环境保护到备灾，地球科学在美国经济的几乎每一个部门都发挥着关键的基础性作用。实践证明，实地考察、暑期项目和实践户外活动等经验可以提高记忆力，最大限度地提高学习成果，并改善学生对STEM主题的态度、感知和感受。不幸的是，实地考察的费用可能很高，身体残疾以及后勤和行政限制可能会限制许多学生获得实地学习机会，可能会阻碍他们对地球科学的兴趣。该项目解决了包容性的这一重要障碍，开发了第一个身临其境的在线虚拟实地考察(VFT)，利用了令人兴奋的图像和古生物实地考察的经验。新的VFT将通过为高中和大学早期教师提供免费的、包含地球科学的资源来帮助解决接触地球科学内容的问题，这些资源可以很容易地整合到他们现有的课堂上。这个项目将利用恐龙古生物学和虚拟野外旅行(VFT)的广泛吸引力，将它们结合成一个创新的新资源，供教育工作者使用。VFT将在虚拟古生物学探险的背景下涵盖地理、数学、生物和物理的核心原理，该探险将作为一个开放的、自定进度的“顶峰”教育计划发挥作用，嵌入大量来自真实野外工作的教育“培训”材料和媒体。该项目的主要目标是：(1)通过将利用地球科学例子和问题的课程纳入现有课程，增加高中和大学预科班对地球科学的接触；(2)通过整合这些学科，增强地理、数学、物理和生物等传统课程的教育内容；以及(3)确定有助于有效招募和保留地球科学的因素，以便教育工作者可以成功地扩大对这些令人兴奋和有影响力的领域的参与。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Successful solutions to complex global challenges transcend disciplinary boundaries and necessitate integrating diverse fields of knowledge, making interdisciplinary education an urgent need to train our national workforce. Few sciences rely on integration more than geosciences, which play critical, foundational roles in nearly every sector of the U.S. economy, from energy exploration and environmental conservation to disaster preparedness. Experiences such as field trips, summer programs, and hands-on outdoor activities have been repeatedly shown to increase retention, maximize learning gains, and improve students’ attitudes, perceptions, and feelings toward STEM topics. Unfortunately, field trips can be costly, and physical disabilities and logistical and administrative constraints can restrict access to field-based learning opportunities for many students, potentially hindering their interest in geoscience. This project addresses this important impediment to inclusivity by developing the first immersive, online Virtual Field Trip (VFT) that capitalizes on the exciting imagery and experience of paleontologic fieldwork. The novel VFT will help address issues in exposure to geoscience content by providing high school and early-college teachers with freely available, geoscience-inclusive resources which can be easily incorporated into their existing classes.This project will capitalize on the broad appeal of both dinosaur paleontology and virtual field trips (VFT) by combining them into an innovative new resource for educators. The VFT will cover core principles of geography, math, biology, and physics within the context of a virtual paleontology expedition, which will function as an open-ended, self-paced, ‘capstone’ educational program embedded with a plethora of educational ‘training’ materials and media from real fieldwork. The primary goals of this project are to: (1) increase exposure to geosciences in high schools and early-college classrooms by incorporating lessons utilizing geoscience examples and problems into existing courses; (2) enhance educational content for traditional courses such as geography, math, physics, and biology by integrating these disciplines, and; (3) identify factors contributing to effective recruitment and retention in the geoscience pipeline so that they may be employed by educators to successfully broaden participation in these exciting and impactful fields.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.