TEACHING ABOUT ENERGY IN GEOSCIENCE COURSES: CURRENT RESEARCH AND PEDAGOGY – AN ON THE CUTTING EDGE WORKSHOP REPORT

Modern societies use massive amounts of energy from many sources to power commerce, industry and transportation. Growing populations and rising global standards of living ensure energy demand will grow in the foreseeable future. Yet, the dominance of fossil fuels in the global energy portfolio complicates efforts to address climate change. To deal with tomorrow’s energy challenges, students must be conversant with traditional energy sources (fossil fuels, nuclear, hydroelectric), new emerging energy sources (wind, solar, biomass, biofuels), as well as many new topics (carbon capture and storage, carbon footprint, energy return on investment, emission wedges). Although based in science and technology, energy issues also encompass many other perspectives, e.g. policy, economics, environment, politics. To explore methods for integrating energy in geoscience courses, an On the Cutting Edge workshop (Teaching About Energy in Geoscience Courses: Current Research and Pedagogy) was held at the University of Wyoming in May, 2009. The workshop brought together geoscience educators from community colleges, liberal arts colleges and universities, who are either teaching energy courses, wish to incorporate energy into their geosciences courses or plan on developing an energy course. Fifteen participants from UW and Wyoming’s community colleges and middle and high schools also attended the workshop through support from UW’s School of Energy Resources.

Current and future directions in energy research, different energy issues/sources (fossil fuels, wind, solar, biofuels) and the pedagogy of teaching energy were examined by keynote speakers. Other speakers described how they introduced energy and energy policy into their classrooms. Working groups discussed methods for integrating energy into existing courses, ideas for new energy activities and designing new courses focused on energy. Workshop participants contributed energy courses, activities, visualizations and suggested readings to a growing collection of energy teaching resources. Numerous ideas about teaching energy, including biofuels, solar energy, energy literacy, carbon storage and student energy use, were identified by participants and submitted to the workshop Web site (http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/energy/index.html).