ON THE CUTTING EDGE EMERGING THEME WORKSHOPS: A PATHWAY FOR GEOEDUCATION INNOVATION

On the Cutting Edge Emerging Theme workshops were designed to catalyze rapid forward motion on high-priority topics for geoscience education. Workshops addressed both pedagogic and content opportunities spanning topics from teaching metacognition to teaching about the Early Earth. Emerging theme workshops sought to move work in priority areas from an initial stage of early activity by isolated leaders in a field toward widespread implementation within undergraduate geoscience courses. By bringing together individuals with significant experience to learn from one another, synthesize current work, and develop a leadership community, the workshops were able to create on-line collections supporting wide dissemination and move forward synergistic collective actions. For example, several participants in a workshop on the role of the affective domain in teaching moved forward a successful study of introductory courses. On-line resources from the affective domain and metacognition workshops are heavily used within and beyond the geosciences supporting advances in teaching. Other pedagogically focused workshop addressed teaching with large data sets, MATLAB, STELLA, GIS, online games, undergraduate research, geophotography, and geoethics. Collections of teaching activities from workshops focused on content topics provided new ideas and new impetus for incorporating these topics into courses. These workshop topics included topics such as the Deep Earth, the Early Earth, Biocomplexity, New Discoveries from Mars, Visualizing Seismic Waves, Seismic Tomography, Geologic Time, and Geology and Human Health. The outputs of these workshops, including presentations, classroom activities, publications, course syllabi, reference lists, tutorials, and more, are available on the Teach the Earth website. New teaching activities can be added by community members and discussion lists remain available to support interaction among interested parties.