TEACHING SEDIMENTARY GEOLOGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY: WORKSHOP RESULTS AND RESOURCES FOR THE COMMUNITY

A workshop on Teaching Sedimentary Geology in the 21st Century, offered in July 2006 through “On the Cutting Edge”, a professional development program for geoscience faculty sponsored by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. The workshop brought together college and university faculty to discuss effective approaches for teaching sedimentary geology in the classroom, lab, and field. Participants shared laboratory, field, and classroom activities, discussed course content and curriculum, explored effective approaches to field trips, and addressed issues in teaching and learning sedimentary geologic concepts and processes. They also learned about using physical models in sedimentary geology courses using examples from the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED). An opening panel of sedimentary geoscientists presented perspectives on what should students be able to do after taking an undergraduate sedimentary geology course and participants then discussed their goals for teaching sedimentary geology at the undergraduate level. Workshop participants articulated goals related to posing and solving problems, designing studies, and dealing with data, goals related to depositional processes, depositional environments, and facies models, and goals related to observation, visualization, communication, self-teaching, and other skills. A valuable resource resulting from the workshop is an on-line collection of teaching resources for the sedimentary geology community at http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/sedimentary/index.html.