LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE INTEGRATE PROJECT: SUPPORTING POSTSECONDARY FACULTY IN THEIR DESIGN OF CURRICULAR MATERIALS CONNECTING GEOSCIENCE AND SOCIETAL CHALLENGES

A community-based curriculum development methodology was developed for a five-year project involving design of curricular materials that connect geoscience to current societal challenges and can be implemented in college science, engineering, humanities, and social science courses. These materials were designed to: 1) teach students about Earth-related grand challenges facing societies; 2) have students work with authentic and credible geoscience data; and 3) develop students’ abilities to solve interdisciplinary problems, increase proficiency in applying geoscientific thinking methods, and advance systems thinking skills. More than 100 faculty members from a range of institution types across the US were configured into 30 curriculum development teams during this project.

To support the curriculum development teams’ design efforts, they were provided a curriculum development standards rubric, guidance from project leaders, feedback from assessment consultants, and access to face-to-face and online professional development workshops. This support was guided by a timeline that included several checkpoints where assessment consultants and project team leaders recursively reviewed their materials at different stages of development. The efficacy of the curriculum development methodology and recursive process that it entailed is evident by comparing rubric scores for materials developed by the project’s first cohort to those for subsequent cohorts and feedback from the curriculum development teams about the available support. Of the six teams in the first cohort, only 33% produced materials that fully met the materials development standards by the first checkpoint. The teams were most challenged by the rubric’s criteria related to metacognitive skill development; creating rubrics; writing learning objectives; and aligning their objectives, exercises, and assessments. As such, professional development workshops and other support were developed or improved. These changes resulted in higher rubric scores for materials developed by later cohorts.