WEB-BASED RESOURCES FOR TEACHING SEDIMENTARY GEOLOGY

As part of the On the Cutting Edge series of professional development workshops for geoscience faculty, a workshop on Teaching Sedimentary Geology in the 21st Century was held in July 2006. In conjunction with the workshop, a web-based resource for teachers was developed, and is at http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/sedimentary. This website provides faculty with ideas, classroom materials and presentations related to teaching undergraduate sedimentology courses. A section on teaching and learning goals contains several answers to the question, "What do I want my students to be able to do when they are done with my undergraduate sedimentary geology course?" Examples include 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 and communication skills. A hallmark of every On the Cutting Edge website is a collection of teaching activities with downloadable handouts, instructor's notes and other materials. This collection contains more than 40 activities for teaching sedimentary geology and can be browsed by topic or by type of activity. The website also contains a similar collection of the best web resources related to teaching sedimentary geology. Lastly, presentations and posters from the July 2006 workshop are housed on the website. Contributions of teaching materials or references useful for teaching are welcome, and can be uploaded via the website.