Initial Publication Date: December 6, 2019

AGU 2019: Make Your Course More Effective and Societally Relevant

AGU Fall Meeting, December 9, 2019

Moscone South, LL Room 4

Leaders: Reginald Archer, Anne Egger, and Catherine Riihimaki

Description:

The Earth sciences are relevant to many issues facing societies today, including ongoing climate change, costly natural hazards, and scarce natural resources. Educators have the opportunity to help future leaders solve these issues by infusing their courses with societally relevant concepts and topics, and by changing their pedagogy to attract students with diverse backgrounds, interests, and experiences, and to enable all students to succeed. Evidence shows incorporating societal issues, such as sustainability and environmental justice, enhances student learning and success throughout the curriculum and can serve as a potential entry point into the sciences. In this workshop, you will strengthen your course materials through making them more applied toward societal challenges and more consistent with research on how people learn. The workshop is appropriate for instructors at all types of institutions, at all stages of their career, and from a variety of disciplines including STEM, the social sciences, the humanities, and interdisciplinary fields. Workshop content can be applied to courses taught at any level. Over the course of the workshop, we will engage in a series of activities that will help you think about your course from the student learning perspective. You will learn about pedagogical techniques by engaging in them, not just by hearing about them. You will leave the workshop having begun to (re)design your course and with an action plan and resources for continuing the process. This workshop is a collaboration between NAGT and AGU.

Goals: By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

  • Strengthen your course materials through making them more applied toward societal challenges and more consistent with research on how people learn.
  • Develop a working knowledge of active learning strategies and how these can support diverse learners.

Outline:

  • Introductions and ice breaker
  • Why make your course societally relevant
  • How to make it more societally relevant: InTeGrate and implementation strategies
  • Explore materials and action plan
  • Next steps

Resources: