WEB-BASED CURRICULUM USING NASA DATA SETS TO BUILD GEOSPATIAL REASONING

Geospatial reasoning is the ability to recognize the temporal & spatial interaction of properties, locations, and rates of change of earth's material reservoirs (solid earth, oceans, and atmosphere) in the generation of observed earth processes and phenomena. In order to increase effective teaching of system-scale thinking, one must first be able to assess geospatial reasoning as a result of instruction. We designed a new curricular module focused on Internet-based, interactive, Flash presentation of NASA data sets of solar flux, land and sea surface temperatures throughout the year. Our module is a partial redesign of the web-based GLOBE Project Earth System Poster, which focuses on large scale earth systems. A written exercise accompanies the data visualization and is designed to guide students to gather data presented in the online module and to reason spatially and temporally about this data. We have completed the initial qualitative portion of this study with 22 pre-service elementary teachers in a specialized earth science course. We set out to identify aspects of the interface and exercise design which facilitated geospatial observations and reasoning in preparation for a mixed-methods scale up of this study into larger earth systems courses. Preliminary results indicate that the majority of students were able to use the module as designed to make accurate observations of solar input and air temperature at various locations on the globe. Approximately 50% of the students were able to construct sophisticated explanations highlighting spatial and temporal connections between the sets of data presented in the module. These results and student interviews indicate that while the re-designed module has improved the data presentation and readability substantially, there is need for further refinement of the inquiry based exercise to encourage deeper scientific reasoning with these data.