Patricia Kelley: So welcome everyone to.
Patricia Kelley: Out of the classroom out of the box we're excited about.
Patricia Kelley: fun morning of toxin posters and renee is going to kick off the first half with the introductions and i'm going to start your timer Kelly psyche.
Renee Clary: Good morning, everyone i'm renee clary at Mississippi state and i'm proud to introduce our very first speaker out of the box and into the field interdisciplinary undergraduate science, education on a Georgia barrier island Robert Vance take it away.
rkvance: Thank you and good morning to everyone out there and the electromagnetic ether.
rkvance: glad to start off here, first of all I want to acknowledge my colleague janie gaskin work with the George dnr and please note the acknowledgments at the bottom as well, I want to talk to you about a program that's been going on in various guises now for.
About 33 years.
rkvance: If you don't know where St catherine's island our host side is it lies between also ball island.
rkvance: And blackbeard sample of coupling.
rkvance: On the GA coast savannah sits a pair to north, you can see that traffic line intersections up there.
rkvance: The program was initiated about 32 years ago by when my colleagues gail Bishop working with the.
rkvance: middle school teacher Nancy marsh when they observed.
rkvance: Some Georgia dnr sea turtle interns working on the beach and decided it might be a good vehicle for teaching teachers various aspects of coastal geology.
rkvance: and historical geology so we started off with a lot of federal funding through teacher quality programs and program is all about K through 12 teachers initially.
rkvance: You can see one group of teachers here from 2011 Fred rich is over here on the right gail Bishop not.
rkvance: One of our other colleagues and Marty Schreiber over here as well, she worked with the College of add during our program there to help them integrate this stuff into their curriculum.
rkvance: gail retired, a few years ago and janie gaskin not took over the program is co directors and now it's a program dedicated to working with undergraduates but as far as the regular scheduled correct from Georgia southern.
rkvance: People that make this program work include mark Dodd he's a director of the Georgia sea turtle cooperative so we work with him monitoring beaches during the summer and during our classes.
rkvance: Brian Mayra Georgia state it's always been a big help there's Fred rich again over on the right, you see, Terry Norton.
rkvance: he's a director of the Georgia sea turtle Center gives a special tours at the Center for students and also comes out to the island and gives lectures out there are newer edition is katie Smith she's our paleontologists at Georgia southern and she's joining our Program.
rkvance: So way this works is we give classes during the bs term we can take about 1800 Grad students maximum and they enrolled concurrently in the sea turtle natural history course to gail Bishop started and a barrier island environmental geology course I an issue.
rkvance: We get them ready with two or three days of preparation at Georgia southern university before we take him to the island for 10 days and residents on St catherine's on.
rkvance: sea turtle natural history course works like taking students out to monitor the beaches and teams doing the work that Georgia sea turtle interns do.
rkvance: And they have to document all sea turtle activity protect nast by screening and marking them getting the locations they relocate nast if they can't survive the incubation period, and they have to collect an eggshell from each nest.
rkvance: And that sent to Brian shamblin uga as part of a mitochondrial DNA market program which has been extremely useful for conservation work on on Georgia islands.
rkvance: After we get through at the beach morning work and the beach is a debriefing session, where the students teams bring all their data we collect that organize it and then it.
rkvance: is entered in the sea turtle or website and afternoon and the dnr access is that for their records.
rkvance: As far as the student.
rkvance: Requirements for this particular course, you have to write a paper that will include information in a log head sea turtle lifecycle.
rkvance: And and a big part of it is going to be a nesting behavior and hatching behavior, and that is from their personal experience and they illustrate that the images they take during the class.
rkvance: Big list of student learning outcomes here, I just want to emphasize a few of these one of his application geologic principles to interpretation of biogenic structures.
rkvance: Another one is proving field method skills daily journaling and scientific observations are doing beach, and then to also emphasize that field science is really integrated genealogies and applied discipline anyway, but we integrate aspects of biology geology oceanography into this course.
rkvance: So for the sea turtle natural history courses students start to work as soon as the title schedule permits.
rkvance: This show some of our students out looking at a sea turtle crawl away and NASA these are loggerhead sea turtle nest.
rkvance: So they're taking notes, they take images gay, they have to get coordinates for the nest site gets entered into the database.
rkvance: here's another crawl away and and asked if you see just find the grass here foreground students again taking notes so they're keeping a field Journal of everything to doing up field so good practice and scientific documentation.
rkvance: So one of the things we are doing here is the biology students get to apply basic geologic principles are fundamental principles that we rely on.
rkvance: And the two major ones they make use of the principle cross cutting relationships and superposition we'll look at some examples of that in action.
rkvance: So you know very basic one here, looking at entry and exit crawl ways if you look at the to crawl ways here don here.
rkvance: We have one which is super imposed on the other, so you can think of this is either superposition or cross cutting relationships to get the sequence here of entry versus exit crawl ways there's also a nest right here to the left of my colleague janie gas.
rkvance: And we start looking at net structures it gets a little more complicated.
rkvance: Here you see an entry crawling to the push marks and the turtles flippers, then you get into this big area referred to as a body, it was a turtle wallace down to firmer damper sand.
rkvance: and creates a chamber and lays eggs and at and then goes through a covering process, which is why this is all stirred up here between crawl ways so students have to determine where the Chamber is within this greater structure which you see here it's not always easy.
rkvance: It can be done by probing shoveling okay here's another nest structure, this time the inserts coming from right again the body fit all the stores sand from the coloring activity and then the exit crawling.
rkvance: So you can use a probe after you decide on what's the most likely spot within the body pit for your egg Chamber or you can shovel very carefully.
rkvance: And if you go deep enough you'll find something looks like this, this is an egg Chamber where you see the top of two eggs exposed here.
rkvance: And he noticed that the sand, is all start up here some bio starvation there and it cross guts Okay, the normal lamb nation and sans mark a heavy mineral layers so application of cross cutting relationships.
rkvance: there's also a nice bit of critical thinking that comes in students are thinking about the timing tied to the activity turtles, as far as the nesting process goes.
rkvance: So, if you look at this image janie is standing right along the last high tide line here and see the Rack behind her so the turtle entered along this crawl away.
rkvance: As the tie was ebbing Okay, made a nasty may have taken 40 minutes to an hour Okay, and did an exit So you see the exit crawl is much longer than the entrance crawl away so this makes the students, think about you know the whole timing and operation here with respect to tides.
rkvance: it's also interesting aspect or the.
rkvance: geologists have to think about the beach environment as a habitat Okay, and then in turn.
rkvance: The geologists or the biologists have to think about the coastal processes that are that are shaping this habitat here's a green sea turtle crawl way that came up in age of this old do and it's been heavily eroded by storm activity, made a nest in return.
rkvance: They actually caught her one day coming back to the ocean after making next year, so those are both biology in geology students make up most of our clientele.
rkvance: Other reptiles nest on the beach include diamondback terrapins Okay, this is a diamondback terrapins to see an upper right.
rkvance: With any field course you had to have flexibility, but you can also use that with respect to teaching moments.
rkvance: Here we have on the lower left your carcass of a loggerhead sea turtle washed up on the shoreline when this happens, we have to call in our dnr people to do it neat cropsey and determined to cause death.
rkvance: So it's a chance for students to learn about sea turtle anatomy the health assessment they opened up the digestive tract.
rkvance: Look at the diet of the turtles and try to determine the cause of mortality in the big picture to it's also a way to look at the adaptation of reptile to the brain environment so here's mark in the middle of stinky necropsy right here so smelly operation those things.
rkvance: Start raking very quickly in summer so.
rkvance: The barrier island course the students are divided up into research teams consistent prepare students.
rkvance: As part of their work, they have to give an oral presentation and last two nights along with a written report.
rkvance: They also are required to do an image collection of different environmental GEO morphological features and they will show the location of each feature on a map, along with some annotation of their image collection.
rkvance: Additional materials or field notes get graded long post course assessment exam here and we have a lot of field trips and supplemental lectures to augment their learning and island.
rkvance: Some more learning outcomes and I can always post these later if you're interested, but some things to emphasize as part of the.
rkvance: barrier island courses attribute gigantic impacts on the Barry Allen environment, and you know it's also really trying to focus on developing more field skills scientific documentation skills.
rkvance: here's Terry Norton to Georgia sea turtle Center Okay, we take our students there before we bring into the owl and make it special tour behind the scenes.
rkvance: Other visitors for our supplemental education here include Chris mallory for Barry college he's a.
rkvance: coyote studying biologists, and we have coyotes on all on this one of our predators now yeah other predators include Feral hogs which are real curse to the environment to our sea turtles here's a nest destroyed by the hawks and here's a game camera showing sal or piglets out there.
rkvance: Are some refugees from an island, on the other side of the planet here, these are lemurs which are free ranging on the islands part of the previous program existed there, and this is a lesson and.
rkvance: habitat loss through deforestation, other things, you can see, on the island there's three or four oyster boilers at one time Georgia was on one of the bigger moisture producers on the coast.
rkvance: And through probably overharvesting and environmental degradation that industry declined and was pretty pretty much over by the Great Depression.
rkvance: Some different types of projects there's a whole list here and I won't go through them all, but these are some of the things that students have done in the past again they work in teams and these projects and they get to present these things.
rkvance: here's one example, we have some students that are also involved in the sustainability concentration.
rkvance: So this is a beach survey of trash, which is a major problem in the oceans, this is one days collection from a small segment beach and it's probably no surprise here in their.
rkvance: pie diagram it's mostly plastic material, so they also in your presentation talks about the degradation time this material impact on the environment.
rkvance: here's example a product or a couple of geology students, where they auger down to the water table, so they were looking at water table with death and then they took salinity measurements and these.
rkvance: hall holes that they all get along the speech transcends.
rkvance: We also get to do various sorts of technology demonstrations, we have a ground penetrating radar toward the southern and here's a cart mounted version of that.
rkvance: And what they got to doing was tracing a golfer tortoise borough and there's a population of these at the northern into the island little flags, you see, in the foreground.
rkvance: are marking the location that borrow and the subsurface there so each of them got to use the ground penetrating radar and work together marketing trends this borrow system.
rkvance: they're having a good laugh here at my expense add a little joke going on here there's Fred rich gannon left here.
rkvance: departing shot here, we always get students together for a group picture now at the end of the course here and wearing some T shirts that we purchase as part of their activity fees Alan so they've all had a good time they're ready to get back to the main one now.
rkvance: So positives of this course, you know they can earn eight hours of electives advanced elective science credit in a very short time, but they work from sunup to sundown and after literally.
rkvance: it's a hands on program to interdisciplinary nature, and it has three big pluses that are always strengths, for any kind of educational program got place based learning.
rkvance: And a very special field environment it's also service learning they do 10 days of conservation work to support sea turtle conservation.
rkvance: They learn through experience it's very hands on program and another real positive out of this is the ladies love the sea turtle work, so we generally have more female.
rkvance: Students in these classes and we do males and that's always a big stamp policy of trying to get more female students involved in the sciences and pursuing advanced careers.
rkvance: Other aspects it's a stepping stone for students that want to pursue more work or even careers wildlife conservation.
rkvance: And another aspect is we get pre veterinary students near so they get to talk with cherry Norton and hear his presentations they get a lot of first hand information it's really useful to them there.
rkvance: And that's it my, thank you for your attention.
Patricia Kelley: Perfect timing, you have 30 seconds to spare.
Renee Clary: Thank you so much that is very, very interesting and my obvious question is this what was your enrollment I saw that wonderful picture at the end where everybody is standing together as a group, and, of course, no one was in a mask.
rkvance: We weren't able to do that, last year we had to cancel the course last year, so.
Renee Clary: What do you what will be your plans are Do you know what your plans will be as far as bringing back that maximum enrollment or do you have plans to re initiate.
rkvance: Your the enrollment there was basically limited to logistics what the Allen can support, as far as housing considerations.
rkvance: At the present we're actually going to a restructuring program so we probably won't we won't be running the course this year, looking at major restructuring frog there and we've had a long run down there over 32 years so pretty impressive.
Patricia Kelley: Kelly.
Patricia Kelley: Kelly, I was wondering how your teams are assigned and if they're cross disciplinary or do they self select until you have challenged us working with biologists on teams are.
rkvance: Good question it's really a mix Patricia we get some of both sometimes it's all biologist you know, sometimes they'll be doing a final surveys or floral surveys, but other times, it can be a mixture, for example.
rkvance: Studying the gopher tortoise borrows or they might be looking at the heading and the depth of the saying so, you may have a geology student that wants to get involved with the geophysics using the ground penetrating radar and.
rkvance: You know they're used to field work or they're taking headings and orientations to, and then the biology student of course it's more interested in and.
rkvance: Just basically to go for tortoises themselves and ecology there so some of these things really work out nicely for mixed biology and geology students.
Renee Clary: If you would like to ask a question, please feel free to put it in the chat or unmute yourself, we have time for another question.
rkvance: Yes.
Brittani McNamee: yeah um, so this is fascinating and I wonder, do you track on these students, as the exit and i'm sorry if I missed this earlier but I what kind of jobs do students that participate in this program get after graduation.
rkvance: uh we don't track the biology students, most of our our geology students still going to.
rkvance: Environmental work, you know still our biggest car.
rkvance: But I get a lot of.
rkvance: Requests for.
rkvance: RD.
Patricia Kelley: Sorry, I was a lining up the next time.
rkvance: I get a lot of requests for support letters, you know so i'll find a lot of the biology students go on and and worked with the Georgia dnr for another year or so and conservation programs or programs are out of state.
rkvance: And some of the students come back and work as interns for us where we have to do monitoring throughout the turtle nesting season, one of those just is now working at a.
rkvance: Big sea turtle program down on the Texas coast.
rkvance: he's already started with their seeds down there.
rkvance: Again, we also get a lot of students go on to veterinary school so they're always looking for support letters for that and again that experience.
rkvance: Getting to talk to Terry Norton who's incredible wildlife veterinary, this is a great experience for them, they really learned a lot from him this gets a great price.
Renee Clary: This is just fascinating so thank you for that talk and we're going to move on to the next one now.
Renee Clary: If you can stop sharing your screen perfect and our next talk is pre recorded it's by carly Lyons, who is a PhD student and a lecturer at Mississippi state, and unfortunately she could not be here with us today tricia I think you are going to show us that recording.
Patricia Kelley: seeing it.
Patricia Kelley: Yes, yes okay all right oh look, you can also hear it miss carly lions.
Patricia Kelley: And I am here from Mississippi State University.
Patricia Kelley: Representing the Department of geosciences and currently I am a PhD student and also a lecturer within the department here at an issue.
Patricia Kelley: And today i'm going to present to you my PhD research my dissertation research, the title of my research is the development and assessment of student created interactive doodle notes as an effective teaching strategy and introductory geology courses.
Patricia Kelley: So what exactly are interactive doodle moments throughout this presentation I have included lots of different examples.
Patricia Kelley: I have what I call teacher examples that I have done, myself and i've also included a lot of student examples so you're going to see a variety throughout this presentation.
Patricia Kelley: But what an interactive doodle know really is is a scientific graphic organizer.
Patricia Kelley: And the dental notes are really meant to condense that a foreign material from those really long traditional PowerPoint slides into something that's really easy to read, easy to follow and mean something to the student.
Patricia Kelley: And do donuts can actually include sketches diagrams graphs pictures.
Patricia Kelley: And I have found that giving and providing my students with doodle notes at the beginning of the lecture really helps maximize their focus.
Patricia Kelley: And the retention of the material because they're really focused more on what i'm saying than trying to keep up with the notes.
Patricia Kelley: So I have provided them with kind of a skeleton an outline of those important themes I want them to take away from that that based lecture so some dental notes can be handwritten I also have computer generated so huge variety i'm going to be showing you throughout the presentation.
Patricia Kelley: So why use interactive doodle notes at the College level and why, specifically in earth science courses.
Patricia Kelley: In my career, I started teaching middle and high school science over 15 years ago and I have found that a lot of those learning and teaching strategies that I implemented at the middle and high school level.
Patricia Kelley: are very much effective at the College level, and specifically earth science is not necessarily a course that high schools offer.
Patricia Kelley: around the country, and if they do offer earth science it's more of an elective and because of that, I have a lot of students coming to me at the College level with a lot of misinformation misconceptions about planet are.
Patricia Kelley: And this is the first time that many of these college students have even taken an earth science course, so I believe that doodle notes are just another tool that professors and instructors can use.
Patricia Kelley: To help those students identify and acknowledge those misconceptions plus you know there's a lot of new ideas and vocabulary in these introductory earth science courses digital notes allow students to be very engaged in the lesson and they're fun.
Patricia Kelley: The theoretical framework behind interactive doodle notes includes the theory of constructivism which really puts the learner in charge of their own learning it's it's making that learner construct their own understanding.
Patricia Kelley: And don't coding theory really concentrates on pairing the verbal with the nonverbal information, stressing the importance of pictures and images and learning new vocabulary and new content.
Patricia Kelley: So, if you look at the example to the right streams and flooding, this is a student example, so this is a really good example of a student both constructing.
Patricia Kelley: his or her own understanding of new content but also using really rich vocabulary and pairing that new content with a lot of pictures and images.
Patricia Kelley: So my research questions really focus on the effectiveness of interactive doodle that's.
Patricia Kelley: Number one do classrooms implementing doodle notes as visualization tools achieve different levels of students warming, then those classrooms that do not implement doodle notes at all.
Patricia Kelley: Number two our student created interactive doodle notes more effective than teacher generated documents for student achievement.
Patricia Kelley: Number three, what is the student perception of doodle notes and an introductory geoscience classroom and number for our interactive doodle notes, effective and applicable to an online setting, especially given our covert situation.
Patricia Kelley: So my research uses many sections of an introductory or science course, but those courses that I teach specifically, so I am using some of the classes as an experimental group.
Patricia Kelley: And some of my classes as a control group one but both groups are exposed to teacher creative doodle notes, and I do this throughout the Semester.
Patricia Kelley: So i'm modeling for the students what interactive doodle hits look like how you use them and the students are provided with the blank versions at the top, so you can kind of see these are.
Patricia Kelley: Some doughnuts that I created basic geophysics they're provided with the blank version at the top and I go through my daily lecture and the students are filling out the answers as we go through the PowerPoint.
Patricia Kelley: They can add to their notes, as they wish, and they can color they can really make the doodle notes their own.
Patricia Kelley: And what i'm looking for is i'm taking my experimental group and i'm asking them to actually create their own student generated interactive doodles my control group one was only exposed to teacher generated interactive doodles.
Patricia Kelley: Here are some more teacher generated examples of interactive doodle notes on the left, I have an example for plate tectonics and on the right here are my beaches and coasts.
Patricia Kelley: And what i've done is i've showed you the blank versions what I provide the students in class with and what the filled out completed colorful answer P should look like.
Patricia Kelley: At the end of the lesson and I go through the PowerPoint when i'm teaching new content and I go back and forth from the doodle notes to the PowerPoint and I end class kind of going over the answers and answering any questions that students have.
Patricia Kelley: So this is my methods gives you an idea of what i've been working on my research has really encompass multiple semesters I started in the spring of 2020 and I continued in the fall of 2020 and I am also collecting data this semester, the Spring of 2021.
Patricia Kelley: We had some interesting things happen in the spring of 2020 so part of that semester was in person, and then we had coven 19 and we transitioned online, but I continued to collect research.
Patricia Kelley: You can tell that I have an experimental group, this is the group that I teach that I expose teacher generated enough to to model.
Patricia Kelley: kind of what interactive doodle notes are, and then I asked the students to create their own so they have access to the textbook.
Patricia Kelley: powerpoints notes and lecture and they condense that into their own conceptual understanding they create their doodle notes.
Patricia Kelley: and include any important vocabulary pictures drawings to demonstrate to me their understanding of the content.
Patricia Kelley: Control group one are those students that are only exposed to teach her generated doodle notes and my control group to are those sections that we're not exposed to doodle notes at all.
Patricia Kelley: So I did this in the spring of 2020 the fall of 2020 and i'm also continuing to do the research now spring of 2021.
Patricia Kelley: So i'm a researcher, I have my experimental group, I have a control Room one and i'm also getting the help from two other teaching assistance they are helping me collect data as well, and their sections are not exposed to interactive doodle notes at all.
Patricia Kelley: So for my experimental group I am using my interactive doodle note revert to grade their digital notes.
Patricia Kelley: These are the students that are using my lectures powerpoints and textbook chapters to create their own digital notes to demonstrate to me their understanding of the content.
Patricia Kelley: So what i'm looking for is 30 minutes of content, are they exhaustive, to the point where they've included all the main ideas, all the main takeaways from that lecture.
Patricia Kelley: Are there did on it's accurate, are they Richard vocabulary, is it neat and organized and make sense and did they include an answer key so Ideally I want students to turn in two pages of blank doodle notes and two pages of color filled in answer key to their digital notes.
Patricia Kelley: So my experimental group was the section that created their own doodle notes, so I also wanted to really show a lot of different examples of the student work.
Patricia Kelley: Some of these are computer generated some of these are handwritten but the students, you can tell.
Patricia Kelley: That are fantastic job demonstrating to me their understanding of the content and they do that by showing me their conceptual understanding and the way that they organize their people notes.
Patricia Kelley: All the vocabulary that they include the pictures that they include so Here are some examples of igneous rocks like tectonics paleontology really great examples of some of my student work.
Patricia Kelley: Here are some more student examples from my experimental group, I have the rock cycle here and metamorphic rocks at the top, is the blank version of their you know notes at the bottom is the colored filled in answer key.
Patricia Kelley: So here is rock cycle and metamorphic rocks.
Patricia Kelley: Here are some more examples of my students i've got weathering and soil and the solar system, so a lot of use of pictures here a lot of rich vocabulary great diagrams great organization.
Patricia Kelley: Here are some more student examples I have one on the history of the earth lots of pictures here kind of describing geologic time.
Patricia Kelley: And another example on mass wasting so lots of different types of mass wasting some pictures really rich and vocabulary again, and you can see the students blank version compared to their colored in answer key.
Patricia Kelley: So the data that i'm collecting for my research includes the scores on pre and post surveys, I have each section of the introduction to burst science courses.
Patricia Kelley: Taking the pre test at the beginning of the Semester and the post survey at the end of the Semester and i'm comparing the growth any student growth that has happened throughout the Semester on that survey i'm also comparing exam grades of all the sections and final exam grades.
Patricia Kelley: Although I am still currently collecting data on my research preliminary results are pretty promising and i'm excited to share that with you students who creates unit generate additional nodes.
Patricia Kelley: tend to perform better in an introductory or science course the know students who do not i'm finding that students who are exposed to teach her created doodle notes only are also showing higher learning games when compared to those classes that do not use digital notes at all.
Patricia Kelley: For the most part, a lot of my students are finding interactive doodle notes very helpful and useful and i've had a lot of positive feedback from students about doodle notes.
Patricia Kelley: I wanted to include some students feedback about doodle notes, so I have some quotes here from the different semesters in which i've been collecting data and i'll just read a few I love the gentleman that she uses.
Patricia Kelley: She did not simply read the notes of the PowerPoint rather she gave us an overview about the main points first and then dive into the PowerPoint.
Patricia Kelley: For printing out the doodle notes and giving us a copy was very helpful and useful I like the doodle notes as well, they are very helpful they definitely helped me get the grasp of the concepts.
Patricia Kelley: i've had nothing but positive feedback from students students are always asking me if there's little notes for today's lecture so great feedback nothing but positive things.
Patricia Kelley: I have some individuals that I would like to thank for their help, I am fortunate to have wonderful mentors and Dr clary and Dr naval that have both really helped me.
Patricia Kelley: formulate my study and develop this PowerPoint so I wanted to thank them.
Patricia Kelley: I also have two great PhD students and teaching assistants that are helping me collect data, so I wanted to say thank you to on hell jimenez and on key to cut car.
Patricia Kelley: Thank you so much for listening to my presentation my contact information is here here's my email at K jl to seven for at Ms state.edu I look forward to answering any questions that you have.
Patricia Kelley: This is my reference slide again thanks so much for listening to my presentation and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your semester.
Renee Clary: Thank you so much for playing that trisha carly is a great researcher a great instructor and the project came about when she showed me some of the techniques, she was using in her her class and.
Renee Clary: I was, I was simply amazed and suggested that perhaps this might be a project that she would like to to research.
Renee Clary: will hurt her teaching as a graduate assistant did not go unnoticed by the Department head who approached her to become a lecturer so suddenly are teaching load is increased.
Renee Clary: And, and because of that she can't be here with us today does anyone have any questions about her projects, I can try to answer a few of them.
Patricia Kelley: I was wondering if this approach has been tried in upper level courses and, in particular, do you think it would work in more quantitative courses that are that are less.
Patricia Kelley: inclined to use of images and that sort of thing.
Renee Clary: that's that's a great question and, to my knowledge, they have not been used, she she's done the the research a deep dive into seeing whether or not.
Renee Clary: anyone else has has used these NGO scientists and she hasn't come up with that she has focused on the introductory classes and has not looked at the upper level classes.
Renee Clary: My take would be that I think you can still map it as a concept um you know concept mapping is still used in the upper level classes, however, the the diagrams that piece would not necessarily be there.
Patricia Kelley: Right yeah that makes sense.
Patricia Kelley: Think we've got less than a minute.
Renee Clary: preview and I am and I have.
Renee Clary: sent a message to the to the support i'm texting krista haney because she did not see the join now so hopefully that can.
Renee Clary: That can be worked out.
Patricia Kelley: So I guess we're open for discussion at this point anybody wants to wants to comment on either of the two previous talks or anything in general about teaching out of the classroom out of the box looks like Brittany, have you unmuted yourself.
Brittani McNamee: yeah I was going to type something in the chat, but it was taking too long.
Brittani McNamee: But I really liked this idea i'm teaching a freshman seminar seminar course in the fall and I really like this idea, especially.
Brittani McNamee: If it can be done collaboratively because then that way like students who are more artistically inclined can help contribute that way, and the students that like to write are really good at.
Brittani McNamee: condensing material can help kind of write out the talking points and then also it being a freshman seminar class, this is one of the first classes they're going to take as students on a campus I it will come i'm hoping it might create some camaraderie between individual students.
Brittani McNamee: And, and even like I like the idea of doodling but some of this could even be collaboratively done online like through jam boards or Google slides.
Patricia Kelley: Good ideas.
Patricia Kelley: renee any any sign of our next speaker yeah.
Renee Clary: She is still looking for the.
Renee Clary: The button and i've told her to call tech support.
Renee Clary: Larry did you raise your hand.
Blair Tormey: I did I didn't want to cut in I joined a little late on that talk, but I just wanted it It reminded me a lot of my master's advisor Conrad Newman, was a.
Blair Tormey: notorious doodler and had a ton of handouts that he give in his Oceanography and intro geology classes, I notes with doodles combined and they were legendary so if you're interested, you can I know that unc just put up a lot bottle a lot of his drawings on their website.
Blair Tormey: In memory of him, so if you go to unc Chapel hill I think geology department and marine sciences department, you can probably find his doodles there.
Renee Clary: Thank you for that that's that's really interesting and i'm writing that note down for carly so she can check it out.
Renee Clary: Interestingly enough, it seems that it's it's a pretty common practice because we're assembling a book on the evolution of paleontological art.
Renee Clary: And and reichel drew he he was a perfectionist and he drew pictures, for his students sort of doodling along those lines, Sarah do you have a question.
Sarah Morealli (she/her): yeah just a question in a comment i'm not going to turn my camera on, I have a bit of a migraine so I look and feel pretty awful um but i'm happy to be here, I do something very similar in my intro classes, I use concept sketches and I was wondering it's been working out somewhat well.
Sarah Morealli (she/her): Because of the online environment, I do have students struggling to turn their material in.
Sarah Morealli (she/her): But they seem to be learning a lot, my question is did um carly's course also involve a lab.
Renee Clary: Great question so that the way that the setup is and Mississippi State University, is that the the 1113, which is a survey of our science water physical geology.
Renee Clary: That is a separate class from the 1111, which is the introduction to our science lab so students do not necessarily have to take the lecture and the lab and they can take the classes in in different semesters and we see that happening, so the the lab is a standalone lab.
Sarah Morealli (she/her): Okay, thank you, my My big concern is i'd like to take this concept sketch, you know, whenever we go back to in person meetings, but you know, right now, with the online environment.
Sarah Morealli (she/her): Because I have pared down my labs my course does have a lab i've pared down the lab so much that I feel like I can justify the extra work with these concept sketches and i'm actually a bit apprehensive about bringing it back to in person, because lab work will increase and.
Sarah Morealli (she/her): While the students are liking, the concept sketches now they may not like the extra coursework come next fall.
Renee Clary: I can say that carly has not received any pushback I mean absolutely no pushback on on doodle notes the students love them.
Renee Clary: She when she implements them in that that control group one oh and her experimental group the students want these doodle notes with every lecture.
Renee Clary: And of course that's a lot of work for her, she does it once a week, at least once a week, and yet the students are asking for more and even after the students were.
Renee Clary: Were tasked with doing their own in the experimental group she hasn't had any complaints from the students.
Renee Clary: Of course, we did see moving online when we were forced to move online and then in the fall semester Mississippi state.
Renee Clary: was open at reduced capacity, so the classes had fewer students in it, we were teaching mask to mask and there were days, of course, that you know carly said I only had you know 13 students show up in my class the others watch from webex.
Renee Clary: So you know we did have some student attrition as far as you know, the live the live group that seems to have dissipated a little bit this semester.
Renee Clary: At least from what we've seen at Mississippi State University and from you know carly implementing these doodle notes.
Renee Clary: it's been fantastically received the students love it they're not complaining that it's extra work and her feedback at the end of the Semester, you know her her teaching scores are are off the charts great.
Sarah Morealli (she/her): Thank you so much, I appreciate your your input and experience.
Renee Clary: I still have a message from krista that she does not have the.
Renee Clary: The.
Renee Clary: The message to join now she can't see that.
Renee Clary: tech support can you give me a number that I can type in for her to call.
rkvance: So doodle note progress and kind of interesting that, just a sort of a historical perspective rather old timers here.
rkvance: way, a lot of us learn geology originally This basically just kind of alive doodle note process your teachers are writing on the board and making their own little diagrams sketches as you went along.
rkvance: We were all following along you know, trying to do our own doodle notes, along with the teacher there during the process it's got kind of a.
rkvance: little bit of intro interesting retro perspective on the whole process.
rkvance: they're.
Learning that way.
Lily Howie: yeah I wanted to say, I had that that was how my experience was in as an undergrad a lot of my professors, I had one Professor specifically who.
Lily Howie: didn't use PowerPoint the everything he did was written on the board, and I got so much more out of that.
Lily Howie: I felt like and so i've tried to implement that in my own teaching I realized this semester teaching over zoom that PowerPoint actually has a feature where it lets you draw on the slides.
Lily Howie: So I have I, and I just happened to have this because i'd be digital art, but I have a growing tablet where you have a little pen and it hooks up to your computer and you can.
Lily Howie: draw with a pen so i've implemented that some and and I think it's worked well, but i'm looking into other ways that because the PowerPoint is is a little bit it's hard to control.
Lily Howie: Things on that, but I am I guess i'm describing in an agreement that yeah I think there's there's a lot.
Lily Howie: of value to those just drawing on the board or watching a professor.
Lily Howie: draw things or even just right thing was.
rkvance: It was a little easier to keep up with those days, because you can put so much information up so fast, you know with the media, we have today.
rkvance: If you can you know post up your presentations on blackboard folio or something like that that helps the students out where they could go back, as you say it's a it's an overload where they're trying to keep up with it at a rapid pace.
Patricia Kelley: And that was one reason why, before I retired I would I would always use the blackboard because it's slow down the pace and I would use PowerPoint only to show images of fossils.
Patricia Kelley: Amateur some reconstructions I would try to keep the verbiage on my PowerPoint slides as as minimal as possible but yeah i'm a big fan of writing in trying as here is conducting class.
rkvance: It has led to a decline and no.
rkvance: Artistic practice and skills, with the.
rkvance: reached out to draw everything on the bullet.
Renee Clary: i'm going to say something in favor for drawing on the boards, though, because what i've found.
Renee Clary: And we've actually published a little bit on this.
Renee Clary: If you have PowerPoint without context students can't build that hierarchy that we automatically know so when we started when we start giving examples of metamorphic rocks.
Renee Clary: They think that's just as important as the characteristics of the different rock types they haven't built that hierarchy in their head, whereas when we sketch on a board we build that hierarchy for them, you know, in the discussion.
Renee Clary: I still like sketching.
Renee Clary: On a board i'm old fashioned, I am still in touch with with our our next speaker and i'm not sure what the issue is, but I have provided the tech support number So hopefully hopefully we're going to try to solve that issue.
Renee Clary: Sarah do you have another question, I see your hand is up but i'm not sure if that's a remnant from earlier.
Sarah Morealli (she/her): Oh, I think that's a remnant i'm sorry.
Renee Clary: Do we have any other comments or questions, unfortunately, the.
Renee Clary: The advance of technology also has created some problems with technology and our conferences we we know when we've entered the correct room right.
Renee Clary: And we see our new one, that on the poster so we know where we're supposed to stand, but it looks like krista haney is having a few glitches this morning.
Patricia Kelley: And I think we're probably gonna have to move on to the next talk.
Renee Clary: That will be at nine yeah so we have nine minutes right now.
Renee Clary: According to to my schedule.
Renee Clary: With the videos that we're posting I know that many of us having to move things online.
Renee Clary: I was, I was doing research in March of 2020 and came back to Mississippi state's campus to learn that, of course, everything was shutting down and we weren't allowed on campus you know we.
Renee Clary: We were told our cars couldn't be park there without a special sign from the D so suddenly it dawned on me that.
Renee Clary: All of the fossils that my students were investigating his hands on specimens and the practical and Paleo lab those had to be digitized so you know.
Renee Clary: 24 hours of finding everything that I needed to digitize and bring back to my house I decorated for fossils I had trade it's in training Center eight and all of my bedroom and.
Renee Clary: It was a really interesting situation, but you know, in making.
Renee Clary: videos and and all of these different snippets that we uploaded I think many of us started asking the question is this overload you know, are we overloading our students.
Renee Clary: And there was a Meta analysis recently I just read this and review of educational research and the conclusion was that the videos do no harm so keep videoing folks.
Brittani McNamee: Since we still have a few minutes I like to touch on that my I really like how accessible, this is all forces to be, but at the same time, even if I have an in person class I usually have a student with some kind of.
Brittani McNamee: Accommodation like they have a pre existing condition and can't be on campus so even though, so I have to basically do a double prep for all of my classes, I have to prepare an online accessible preparation and in person accessible preparation.
Brittani McNamee: Again, for those students that require those accommodations.
Brittani McNamee: And I know that it seems like it's not an overload on students, which is great, but it's an overload on me.
Renee Clary: Here here.
Renee Clary: We had a list of faculty.
Renee Clary: With experience teaching online available to other faculty.
Renee Clary: And Oh, I see krista has just joined us as she's connecting to audio.
Renee Clary: And krista is an expert online instructor we only have about let's see she's still connecting to audio we may have a brief overview of her discussion, but we're going to have to keep on schedule, so we won't get the.
Renee Clary: The full presentation krista can you hear me you're muted.
Renee Clary: The button at the you should have a MIC at the lower left hand corner of your screen.
Christa: got it.
Christa: OK OK and i'm going to share my screen I realized, you need to stay on schedule.
Christa: So I think what I will do is, I will just share the the activities.
Christa: Can you see my screen.
Renee Clary: It says it's started Okay, we see all of your different slides right now.
Christa: Okay, good, well, let me go through some of the strategies that I do of course most people use group discussions.
Christa: Most people use group discussions and what I have done is I usually give some provocative articles, can you see that slide about the articles that i've.
Renee Clary: detentions, yes.
Christa: Okay perfect.
Christa: So this semester, I gave some really relevant articles about.
Christa: Sharing water resources and then I would have people post to the discussion board and then so we would have this rich discussion and then what I would do at the end is I would really summarize.
Christa: A lot of the overall feelings that the students had so here is my executive summary of summarizing.
Christa: The main points that people had, and what I think i'll do next year is give percentages of students 31 at a 45 students wrote that.
Christa: They didn't agree with such and such and that I posted, of course, the drought monitor because.
Christa: They have significant drought in Arizona, and the readings were pertaining to water resources in Arizona, and then, this is my summary of the second article, so I think it's really important that.
Christa: You give these prompts but then that you also summarize these for the students and in another course that I offer a forensic geoscience course.
Christa: This is the very first post that was posted yesterday about somebody using Google earth resources to look at the water resources that were involved in this crime scenario, and it really pulls a lot of geosciences we use.
Christa: twilight's of planetary science data we use hydro logic data we use geology data we use, whether in terms of viewpoints and relative humidity and that sort of thing so that's one example, the very first post.
Christa: have somebody in my class that used a Google earth example another example that I use is giving a.
Christa: group presentation so each student I break the class into groups of about five students.
Christa: And I create discussion board posts for them, they post a presentation and then they give what I call tag feedback, where the ti tells them something they did well.
Christa: A is asking a provocative question G is giving them some suggestions of for improvement, and so this is the tag feedback, based on a student's presentation and then the student then responds to.
Christa: The student that gave their tag feedback and that really gives a lot of discussion surrounding the presentation so it's sort of a guided discussion.
Christa: I also have students go and get a local hydro graph, and this is an example of a student that posted the hydro graph and they interpret it relative to.
Christa: The hydro climate of the areas of places up North talk about the spring snow melt and a lot of overland flow due to.
Christa: frozen ground and here is an example, based on the hydro graph on a student in my class here in Mississippi up at Oxford where they talk about the flood stage they talk about.
Christa: How this is relative to the hydro climate of the area and they even this person even mentioned, where the gauge was located.
Christa: And a lot of people even say you know I just turned my tap on and I don't even think about where my water resources come from.
Christa: um I also have people look up their local superfund site or look at their water testing records for their area, and I think what's really important is a lot of people say I never ever even considered.
Christa: My water safety, unless I see a boil water notice on the news so just a couple tips for success so so I can round out.
Christa: As I do think a lot of people hear the word group work and think, oh no because they had such a negative experiences.
Christa: So what I really emphasize is why this is relevant to leverage this vast student experience we have students from across the country, and even in the world, I had a student do.
Christa: A presentation, based on air quality in Kabul Afghanistan last year and that's really relevant because people see.
Christa: Different water resources and environmental issues from across the world, and you also have students that are non traditional students that have vast experience.
Christa: So they really get to forge these little learning communities within this large class, and I think it's important to really make it count, not to have it be busy work but to have them.
Christa: focus on a local issue that's significant for their local area, and I also believe in basing their grade based on their performance not other people within the course so they're not dependent on other learners.
Christa: Their grade is based on their performance their presentation, how they answer the questions and I think that really takes a lot of the stress and anxiety out of.
Christa: What my grade is dependent on Steve and Jane and janice and Marcus and what they do know I base it on their grade, and I address the worst case scenarios, what if someone doesn't give you teach tag feedback that doesn't.
Christa: Count that's not going to penalize your grade, so I really think that helps and I think it's important to to moderate the discussion to guide the discussion to go in and kind of prompt people if they're not posting.
Christa: but also to have multiple deadlines their presentation is due on this date, then their tag feedback is do a week later than they have another week to respond to the question, so they really get a lot of time.
Christa: And set guidelines.
Christa: So I apologize for jumping in late and having technical difficulties.
Renee Clary: Based on the.
Christa: Based on the bit that you've seen do you have any any questions.
Renee Clary: Well, we don't have time for questions, unfortunately, because we have to stick with the schedule, but kristin please, please stay in the forum, because we've had opportunities to have discussions, when we ended a little early with a session.
Renee Clary: and hopefully we can come back to to this with some questions.
Christa: Thank you.
Renee Clary: Okay, so our next our next presenter is Brittany, if you can stop sharing your screen krista I.
Christa: Am i'm trying to exit oh.
Renee Clary: There we go.
Christa: Did I do that right.
Renee Clary: Okay, now there we go perfect so our next speaker is Brittany and she is going to speak about the enrichment of our science curriculum through shared experiences between instructors and participants in the senior senior auditor program at unc asheville Brittany.
Brittani McNamee: Oh so many things to click.
Brittani McNamee: Right so Hello good morning everyone i'm so i'm giving this presentation on some shared experiences that we have had.
Brittani McNamee: With one of our senior auditor students and so me and Dr lingle on the two of us are professors of our science here at unc asheville and bill Jacobs who's in the room.
Brittani McNamee: Is our student participant in this, so I want to give a little bit of some background of our program to start off here at unc asheville we are a public liberal arts university and we currently at least according to this semesters count, we have.
Brittani McNamee: A little over 300 enrolled undergraduate so we're primarily an undergraduate granting university, but we do have a senior auditor program so seniors.
Brittani McNamee: 65 and older, who are not enrolled as a degree seeking students can audit classes tuition free and I think they just have to pay like a minimal application fee in order to be enrolled at you ncaa.
Brittani McNamee: And the other caveats to this particular program or they do there does have to be space inside of the classes.
Brittani McNamee: Or, there needs to be specific, specific explicit permission from the instructors that they can teach with an overload for these particular students.
Brittani McNamee: And just a little bit about our department, so we are the environmental studies department at unc a we have 162 degrees seeking majors.
Brittani McNamee: Which is the second largest at the university and we always kind of do get out with biology and psychology for kind of first place.
Brittani McNamee: And we have 10 faculty so we're kind of on the smaller side of the departments, even though we have a lot of majors and we offer.
Brittani McNamee: Three major concentrations ecology and environmental biology environmental management policy or science and then some students can basically propose to create their own.
Brittani McNamee: Individual concentration or their individualized concentration and some of the examples have been environmental journalism environmental sustainability, sustainable agriculture, whatever they can imagine essentially and be able to define within our particular Program.
Brittani McNamee: Now all of our em vr majors are required to take an internship class, meaning that they have to.
Brittani McNamee: They have to enroll in a three credit internship class.
Brittani McNamee: Get hired or volunteer for an internship program and then they write a series of reflections and research papers and then present give a short presentation to other students taking an internship.
Brittani McNamee: Over that semester their experiences and we do some students can substitute and undergraduate research project.
Brittani McNamee: In place of that this internship, and so we typically reserve the research projects for students that show a lot of potential and typically students that have a project in mind.
Brittani McNamee: Sometimes we might propose to students like hey we have this research project, we would like to have students work on it, but a lot of times these students will come to us with some kind of idea that they have or something they like to explore on their own.
Brittani McNamee: And some of the components that are required between internship and research are some kind of written component so for internship it's a.
Brittani McNamee: research paper that they've written related to their internship project or for research, students, they can publish a research paper to uncle undergraduate research journal or some other outlet.
Brittani McNamee: And then there also has to be a presentation component so for internships they present their.
Brittani McNamee: Again, their their internship experiences to their peers and our research students, they can present a talker poster at our own universities hosted undergraduate research symposium.
Brittani McNamee: or some other conference like se GSA and actually me and Dr Jackie and Dr Jeff actually were the three geoscientists in the department.
Brittani McNamee: And we end up having a lot of our research students present at southeastern GSA so you might have seen us around before.
Brittani McNamee: So sorry really quick, this is a picture of bill out at shiny rock is done so he's actually giving a presentation or his research presentation tomorrow.
Brittani McNamee: And i'll have details at the end of the presentation, for when that will be the, so this is him doing some of his research out of shiny rock.
Brittani McNamee: So, to give some brief background about bill.
Brittani McNamee: bill ended up graduating from swarthmore in 1967 and Duke law school in 1973 and he had has had a 40 year legal career, which does include the US Court of Appeals and Supreme Court clerkships.
Brittani McNamee: And also extensive periods in private practice and also in house counsel and throughout much of this experience of his life him and his family.
Brittani McNamee: regularly vacation to the mountains here in South Western North Carolina and it just always kind of piqued his interest and he always wanted to learn more about just about the regions that he was exploring so after after he had retired.
Brittani McNamee: him and his wife actually moved out to South Western North Carolina and he's an avid hiker and will go out and explore the area on his time.
Brittani McNamee: And he became particularly interested in the Highlands catcher cashers plateau and he couldn't quite find the information that he was looking for that really explained.
Brittani McNamee: The geology of the area and really explain the formations that he was saying so he dug deeper into scientific literature.
Brittani McNamee: And with anybody you find that, like the more you start researching something the less that you know, so this was kind of the inspiration for him to reach out and start taking classes, through the auditor program at unc a.
Brittani McNamee: Also bill wrote this book, which was inspired after receiving a request from attendees at various geology related programs that he has presented to different groups across.
Brittani McNamee: The region, particularly focusing on his experiences and his observations of the geology in the Highlands caches Pluto and so his book once the special places I even have a copy of it in front of me.
Brittani McNamee: And you can purchase a copy also at the link below at great rocks press COM.
Brittani McNamee: So he's he is self published this book he has.
Brittani McNamee: reached out to our we have a media Center here on campus and so enrolled students enrolled in classes have access.
Brittani McNamee: To those particular resources so as he was enrolled in classes during his auditing program he was able to use the writing Center to kind of help burn up the writing Center in the media Center to kind of help construct and put together this book that he could then later self publish.
Brittani McNamee: And this book is particularly written for the non scientist audience and it's heavily illustrated, and it really gives.
Brittani McNamee: A really engaging overlook of Eastern brokerage geology and particularly focusing on why we have certain rock formations and why we have certain waterfalls where we do.
Brittani McNamee: And so, his book was released in June 2019 and again, you can purchase it here.
Brittani McNamee: So this is a list of some of the classes that bill has audited, I think, so he has taken mineralogy and metrology with me he took structural and field geology with Dr Jackie he even went on the.
Brittani McNamee: Regional field geology trip with me and Jackie a couple years ago, and so the regional field geology trip is a two credit 200 level class.
Brittani McNamee: The only prerequisite is physical geology so our intro class and we will take students out somewhere typically out West on a two week field excursion, and so this particular year we.
Brittani McNamee: flew into salt lake city drove up through tetons and so you can see Jackie.
Brittani McNamee: Giving a brief lecture to everybody, about the tetons and bill is sitting over here on the right hand side of this foreground rock.
Brittani McNamee: Just as immersed in everything is everybody else he took notes paid attention did the assignments, and again participated, like everybody else, even if he was auditing the class, so we went up to grand tetons up the yellowstone to glacier.
Brittani McNamee: Oh gosh back down and creators of the moon, and then back out through salt lake city again all in two weeks, it was it was a rush.
Brittani McNamee: And then right now he's actually enrolled in one of the history department southern appalachian history and culture class which.
Brittani McNamee: he's kind of using to kind of help tie together his knowledge of the geology of the area with some of the Mining and Other mineral resource culture that has been really prevalent here in southern appalachians.
Brittani McNamee: To give a bit of a background about me and what my research interests are this is me actually at the dire right so that's along the highline trailing glacier.
Brittani McNamee: So this is a slightly serpent nice alright so that's intruding into the overlying limestone and I am a mineralogist by trade.
Brittani McNamee: And my particular research focuses on that that I have taken into account here at you ncaa are I really like to integrate.
Brittani McNamee: A variety of different types of analytical equipment and methods in order to identify and characterize.
Brittani McNamee: minerals inside of different rock formations and so a lot of my student research projects focus on North Carolina public lands and then some of my other research projects are looking at.
Brittani McNamee: Identifying characterizing minerals and economic mineral deposits so bill had after you took mineralogy metrology to gain some insight for his book.
Brittani McNamee: He proposed to me a research project regarding the shiny rock formation and shiny rock wilderness which fell in line perfectly with some of my other students interested projects, and so we were able to get a permit through.
Brittani McNamee: The forest service, and it has been an absolute delight to work on this with them.
Brittani McNamee: And this is just a brief list of some of the other classes, that I teach here at unc asheville.
Brittani McNamee: So a little bit about my mineralogy and metrology class the, especially in relation to the experiences that bill has helped brought into this class.
Brittani McNamee: bill had already had done extensive research on the geology of this particular region and, but he just wanted to know more about how the minerals and rocks kind of play into.
Brittani McNamee: What you see in those formations and then he also later will take structure from Dr Jackie day again kind of tie in the same kind of concepts.
Brittani McNamee: But it was really interesting to see him, be able to apply the concepts, we were learning in class.
Brittani McNamee: To all the local formations that he has been hiking throughout his years either you know, during family vacations and even after retirement.
Brittani McNamee: And he also brought in a lot of new insight to how mineral and tester textural characteristics of rocks really influenced the local GEO morphology the waterfalls and the other rock formations that you end up, seeing that are so prevalent here in Western North Carolina.
Brittani McNamee: And then, some of the student outcomes that kind of occurred from this experience, where.
Brittani McNamee: bill is not shy about asking questions which has been a delight to have in class because he breaks that ice really early on.
Brittani McNamee: So students just became more comfortable asking their own questions earlier on in the Semester so again we ended up to build a camaraderie in class a lot quicker than we usually do again thanks to bill, and also because of bill's extensive kind of knowledge and experience out.
Brittani McNamee: out in western North Carolina he would always make these connections between what we were learning in class with his own personal observations.
Brittani McNamee: which really encouraged a lot of other people in the class to do the same, because a lot of students in our department are pretty avid hikers or.
Brittani McNamee: take part in outdoor recreation so really got them thinking about their own personal experiences.
Brittani McNamee: So a little bit about Dr Jackie she is a structural geologist by trade.
Brittani McNamee: and her research focuses primarily in the evolution of brittle and ductile fault systems and the Himalayas Nevada and also in the southern appalachians and she has actually.
Brittani McNamee: been awarded at BAT grant grant I think it was in.
Brittani McNamee: To have students end up going out and mapping the southern appalachian or false systems in the southern appalachians and she has submitted another one for this year.
Brittani McNamee: And so her primary courses that she teaches is obviously structural and field geology she does introduction to GIs she's also started teaching.
Brittani McNamee: A class on the geology other southern up appalachians there are some lecture components, but it's primarily field excursions and then she also is a regular instructor for the regional field geology class that we do over the summer.
Brittani McNamee: So these are some of her pictures from her structural and field geology class we see bill on talking about some of the features that he has seen and here we're looking at.
Brittani McNamee: High falls in North Carolina, which is one of the locations that bill has been out to numerous times and suggested this to Jackie and I think the the students had the time of their lives at this particular location.
Brittani McNamee: So someone.
Bill Jacobs: That was a really fun place to be with a structural geologists.
Brittani McNamee: You guys were fantastic I saw a lot of pictures afterwards.
Brittani McNamee: So some of the professional outcomes that Jackie notice coming out of this experience again was adding all these new field trip locations and also just getting a different perspective on the region, so you end up.
Brittani McNamee: it's kind of Nice because, like as trained geologists we're trained to look for certain things.
Brittani McNamee: And, but bill is just going off of what he finds interesting so it's really neat to be able to put what I know from my training with what bill is just observing and finds interesting and would like to know more about and then there's also been.
Brittani McNamee: During these field trips, they were able to do a lot of geologic instructional data collection, as well as as a class put together some really interesting field observations and their own interpretations about the geologic history.
Brittani McNamee: And i'm going kind of fast, but overall experiences.
Brittani McNamee: bills participation in our classes really inspired students to dig deeper in their own critical thinking about concepts that they're learning and applying them to what they see.
Brittani McNamee: Jackie and I ourselves have gained a lot of new insights and perspectives into local geology and other formations of interest.
Brittani McNamee: And bill ended up gaining that knowledge and feedback so Dr Jeff Jackie and myself all provided feedback on bill's book to kind of help fill in some of the gaps and help tie everything together.
Brittani McNamee: And bill was able to kind of satisfy his own curiosity about a particular rock formation and be able to apply that knowledge with a through mentored scientific exploration and he actually got.
Brittani McNamee: kind of eye opening firsthand glance as to all the intricacies of scientific study and we also have co authored a manuscript that we recently submitted to southeastern geology so bills also gotten some you know insight into the world of academic publishing.
Brittani McNamee: And just as some partying slides we did go back so a lot of this research, we did before coven and then we were kind of right at the edge when coven hit on this research project.
Brittani McNamee: So it causes everything to kind of get shifted back, but we were able to go back out into the field and explore some of these places, again with masks.
Brittani McNamee: And I highly encourage everybody to participate or go visit bills presentation tomorrow on the shiny rock formation and his research project.
Brittani McNamee: And so that will be tomorrow, Friday, April 2 at 950 central time or 1015 Eastern time, and this is going to take place in such in session T 20 so session T 20 tomorrow at 915 central time go see bell.
Brittani McNamee: And with that I like to say thank you phil thanks for stopping or thanks for being here too, and I would love to entertain any questions.
Renee Clary: Thank you so much for that Brittany i'm not sure if we have time for questions.
Patricia Kelley: I think we need to.
Patricia Kelley: We need to continue, but people can always.
Patricia Kelley: put questions into the chat and you can can on to two questions in the chat.
Bill Jacobs: i'd like to just say very quickly, that it is just wonderful to realize that my involvement which has really been great for me has also.
Bill Jacobs: helped the unc a program and the undergraduates there.
Renee Clary: I am fascinated with this and I hope to learn more.
Renee Clary: Okay, our next speaker is Michael fenster.
Renee Clary: And he will speak about teaching undergraduates by making them consultants.
Michael Fenster: Good morning, everyone can you hear me okay.
Michael Fenster: Yes, he can hear you.
Patricia Kelley: you're doing well.
Michael Fenster: Perfect My first question is is bill available for hire like to hire him to be a plant in my classes.
Bill Jacobs: Where are you located.
Michael Fenster: Virginia so good morning everybody and good morning to my former and favorite paleontology Professor Tracy Kelly.
Michael Fenster: i'm not broke brown nosing anymore, because i'm a professional.
Michael Fenster: My name is Mike fenster i'm a geologist and I work at randolph macon college and national in Virginia, I am the director of the Environmental Studies Program.
Michael Fenster: And I work with my colleague chaz Cohen who's a biologist to pull together this curriculum and sort of courses that i'm going to share with you today.
Michael Fenster: When we first started down this road, on this on this approach of making students consultants, we really didn't know if this would end up as a disaster or not, and now that we've used this curriculum for about 15 years or so.
Michael Fenster: We can say it took us 15 years to convince us that it's worth telling others about so let me start out by giving a little bit of background in history, the three gentlemen on the right here started the program back in 1991 environmental studies program that is.
Michael Fenster: And the curriculum consisted of a smorgasbord of offerings across disciplines essentially students could pick courses from various prescribed categories.
Michael Fenster: And so, our students when they graduated really walked away with a smattering of knowledge from different disciplines mostly obtained through chalk and talk teaching methods.
Michael Fenster: When chaz and I arrived on the scene at the College, we recognize this approach might not provide the best way to prepare environmental professionals.
Michael Fenster: For the challenges of the 21st century so like good scientists would be and ask questions.
Michael Fenster: And the first question, we would post each other, was what does an environmental professional need to know to thrive and survive in the 21st century and which disciplines are most important for preparing preparing environmental professionals, for the real world.
Michael Fenster: But in asking this question we really had to face some constraints which we are now labeling here as facts, we had to face.
Michael Fenster: And first fact we had to face is something we all know, and that is that paradigms change over time what you and I learned way back when isn't necessarily what students need to know today.
Michael Fenster: Second fact we had to face was that there's more content than we can teach, how do we get our students to possibly learn everything there is to know about a subject.
Michael Fenster: and which facts are most important for them to know, and even if we taught them all the facts.
Michael Fenster: What they retain the facts.
Michael Fenster: He would they even retain the facts, for the next exam.
Michael Fenster: So getting all these constraints and with all the emerging issues and information needed to understand very complicated environmental issues, well this bullet says it all, I think.
Michael Fenster: hard for us to even keep up with things so so given these four conundrums we first turned to the literature.
Michael Fenster: to learn what the research had to say about effective learning so we did a lot of homework, of course, on how to deal with the facts that we covered in the previous slides.
Michael Fenster: And, in the end, after reading a ton of papers and books, we did find some useful pedagogical techniques and some rationale, but no real blueprint for how to structure and environmental studies programs.
Michael Fenster: So that led us to the idea of finding out what other people were doing and other parts of the country.
Michael Fenster: And back then, in the early 2000s, there was a group now defunct called the Northeast environmental studies group that had meetings every year and it gave us the opportunity to learn from people and talk to people who were in our situation.
Michael Fenster: Unfortunately, even those meetings didn't answer the main question we saw the answers to.
Michael Fenster: What we did glean from all those years of reading and attending meetings as that's tunes really needed, two things they needed they needed solid knowledge in a discipline.
Michael Fenster: And they needed a lot of experience working effectively in interdisciplinary teams why because that's the way it works in the real world, you put experts in teams with other experts to solve complicated multi discipline disciplinary problems, that is, the consulting business model.
Michael Fenster: So we really.
Michael Fenster: wrestled and wrestled with this with this question and we were truly at our wits end.
Michael Fenster: Oh, and in particular because we, we had to meet these constraints within our own institution, because of our heavy gen ED program here at the College.
Michael Fenster: we're only allowed to offer 42 credit hours on a major and there were just two of us really and really just one F T because chaz was a biologist i'm a geologist.
Michael Fenster: So we really work at our wits end so we decided to attend just one more nice meeting and on a layover, this is a true story on a layover in Philadelphia.
Michael Fenster: After a nice sized beer we wrote out our curriculum on a napkin and the rest is history, so let me share with you guys what we came up with.
Michael Fenster: program really has two components two main components, one is the core.
Michael Fenster: and the other is something called the area of expertise.
Michael Fenster: And the core, is where we emphasize the interdisciplinary teamwork, and the skill and contextual development required for students to work well in interdisciplinary teams.
Michael Fenster: And the cornerstone of the core and the focus of the rest of my talk today is our three main environmental problem solving classes.
Michael Fenster: notice, I said three of them students take one of them as a freshman one is a junior and one as a senior and the senior year Problem Solving class is the capstone to the major.
Michael Fenster: In between the freshman level and upper level Problem Solving classes students put a whole bunch of skills and their tools in their toolbox.
Michael Fenster: In particular, they learn how to give effective oral presentations they learn the regulatory framework and ethical context and environmental issues they learn how to work effectively in teams, they learn GIs skills and they do an internship in the workplace.
Michael Fenster: The area of expertise enables students to develop disciplinary expertise in any discipline of their choice.
Michael Fenster: And that is because environmental studies is truly an interdisciplinary.
Michael Fenster: Program.
Michael Fenster: Students then bring this disciplinary expertise into their upper level Problem Solving classes to help solve those more complex problems, so now let's focus on a little bit more about these these Problem Solving courses.
Michael Fenster: here's an overview of how they work.
Michael Fenster: Every semester students work with a real off campus client that client has a real problem that he wants or she wants to have solved and so there's an eye towards analysis and solving.
Michael Fenster: And here's the again the major point.
Michael Fenster: These these opportunities, because the students are doing three of these over the course of their tenure in college.
Michael Fenster: They experienced three novel situations.
Michael Fenster: So there's a new client new project, each time giving them those novel opportunities and as a side note here the juniors and seniors take the class, at the same time.
Michael Fenster: And that enables my colleague JASMINE and me to work together, because the courses meet together, so we really do get a lot of work done that way too.
Michael Fenster: And so, in a sense, we as instructors we use the instructors serve as the project managers So what do we do for a textbook.
Michael Fenster: Well, there is none.
Michael Fenster: Right, because the projects change, there is no one textbook textbook that covers all the projects, so what is required, well, we get our students into the peer reviewed and grey literature.
Michael Fenster: So, while the clients and projects change every semester here's some common aspects to each project.
Michael Fenster: The first one here shows that students experience a genuine research project that needs to be planned out and executed students, also in every semester, have the opportunity to gain gather new data.
Michael Fenster: We also have an eye towards developing solutions to the clients problems and the the projects typically have a mixture of different disciplines mostly We found that they send tend to land on science policy and economics.
Michael Fenster: So what training to the students get the answer to that is whatever it takes, we are serving as consultants to solve a client's problem and the training occurs to help us get that problem solved.
Michael Fenster: So now, let me show you the core structure for each individual Problem Solving course, in other words here's what we do each semester structure pretty much stays the same.
Michael Fenster: The first week the client comes to class and presents a request for proposal to the student.
Michael Fenster: Then the next month or so sometimes a month in a week or month in two weeks, the students get up to speed on the nature of the problem and we've designed a series of assignments dedicated to helping students accomplish that goal.
Michael Fenster: We found that early on it's important for students to form groups now here's where the team work starts, because at the end of week four or five.
Michael Fenster: After the students get up to speed on the nature of the problem students will present a study plan and scope of work to the client both orally and then after they finish their oral presentations they submit a written report that's done by each group independently.
Michael Fenster: The rest of the Semester is dedicated implementing their scope of work, study plan.
Michael Fenster: Each day, we come to class we're doing the work to get to meet the work tasks that they pose and their scopes of work and then, finally, at the end of the Semester.
Michael Fenster: The client returns and the students present their findings they make the recommendations to the client again both orally and in writing.
Michael Fenster: So i'm sure you're wondering does this approach work, and so we have assessed various goals, the one i'm sharing with you here.
Michael Fenster: Is the the teamwork skills goal so we've used a modified version of the aclu value rubrics on teamwork to assess whether or not students improve their teamwork skills within a semester.
Michael Fenster: And from the freshman level class to the junior and senior level class so here on the bottom axis the freshman class is denoted by easiest one to five mid semester end of semester, and the upper level junior and senior Problem Solving classes are denoted.
Michael Fenster: With.
Michael Fenster: And four or five.
Michael Fenster: The histogram bars here what they show is the average percentage of assessment rankings that students came to their peers across the five AC and new questions, focusing on teamwork, and they evaluated their peers on a scale from one to four were one is the worst and four is the best.
Michael Fenster: For for primary results have emerged, and while this plot shows the results from one year, we found that the results are consistent from here to here so notice your first that most votes occur and the highest rankings.
Michael Fenster: And both another result is that both the freshman level class the one on five class improves from the beginning, beginning or middle of the Semester to the end.
Michael Fenster: And so does the upper level class.
Michael Fenster: notice also that the upper level class consistently scores higher than the lower level classes, indicating that the vertical integration is working.
Michael Fenster: And finally, across the year.
Michael Fenster: The highest rankings increase and the lowest rankings decrease, so these data have suggested to us that the curriculum is meeting.
Michael Fenster: Sorry, is meaning its goals to improve teamwork generating skills.
Michael Fenster: So let me share with you some examples of projects and clients we've worked with and the focus here is not so much on the project title or the content of the project.
Michael Fenster: But more about the client and i'm hoping that, in this way, you will notice the applicability of this approach to the discipline of geology.
Michael Fenster: This semester we're working with a homeowner's association who cares about the quality of water and a large reservoir built for a nuclear power plant.
Michael Fenster: we've also had clients from for profit engineering firms testing the efficacy of novel pollutant mitigation strategies.
Michael Fenster: we've also worked for federal agencies here the US fish and wildlife service tasked with managing endangered species.
Michael Fenster: We also work with state agencies, quite often, this makes great freshman level projects.
Michael Fenster: Because we're helping with the tm do implementation process and then, finally, we work with quite a few nonprofit organizations here's one dedicated to helping present and inmates.
Michael Fenster: So, now that you've seen.
Michael Fenster: How the problem solving courses are structured and some examples let's focus for a couple minutes on the feasibility of these.
Michael Fenster: In particular, what makes a good project.
Michael Fenster: So chaz and I put our heads together and brainstorm on a few bullets that we'd like to share with you here what we think are all characteristics of a good project it's really important to have a clearly defined scope of work.
Michael Fenster: We also really emphasize that we need clear questions that don't have answers associated with them.
Michael Fenster: And so the instructors are just as clueless as the students, we don't have the answers.
Michael Fenster: So in essence we're essentially serving as project managers for the course rather than instructors.
Michael Fenster: oops sorry it's also helpful to let the client know that what they're involved in is an educational experience.
Michael Fenster: we've also found that another characteristic of a good project is that the projects have.
Michael Fenster: have some regulatory framework associated with them so there's an existing body of work or data on the project, and in that way.
Michael Fenster: The students know that they're essentially plugging in new information and new data to an existing body of work that's not always the case, but it seems to work well for the freshman level classes.
Michael Fenster: And finally, who doesn't like field work, most of our students come to the major because they want to be outside and and, frankly, the professors like also.
Michael Fenster: we've also found that variation is key, so that so that students don't have to have repeated experiences and we are truly.
Michael Fenster: offering them novel experiences.
Michael Fenster: So you might be wondering at this point how do we get the clients in the first place, and to be completely honest with you, it truly is starts with a leap of faith, you simply have to get started.
Michael Fenster: And you don't have to wait for a long list of clients, we found it helpful to start local we have existing partnerships with the town planners and managers here in our local town house and.
Michael Fenster: They had existing projects from designed to meet tmt out regulations.
Michael Fenster: because some of our streams were on the three or three day impaired list so those were really nice projects to get involved with and to and to have.
Michael Fenster: An opportunity to play HALO with freshmen.
Use me.
Renee Clary: Finally, like.
Michael Fenster: Okay, thanks.
Michael Fenster: What client wouldn't what like this pitch.
Michael Fenster: You get 20 free undergraduates working on your project for three months for free.
Michael Fenster: We also do outreach at every opportunities and garden clubs to the board of trustees will utilize formal students former students in the workplace, we have students working for nonprofits and agent and federal agencies and we keep our ear to the ground.
Michael Fenster: i'm almost finished here we've got a lot of tangible benefits to the program but two of our favorites are here, these, these are the ones that keep us going.
Michael Fenster: Students pass us in the hallway and routinely asked us what's the what's the project, going to be for next year who's going to be the client and then we got a fair amount of.
Michael Fenster: responses from students by emails and letters all saying how effective the problem solving classes were for their professional lives So, in summary we've been doing this long time it is feasible it works.
Michael Fenster: So what could possibly go wrong now.
Michael Fenster: Thank you.
Renee Clary: Thank you so much for that unfortunately we don't have time for questions, we will have to move on to our next presenter, but I hope we can come back around when we do have some time because I have some questions about this.
Michael Fenster: i'm off to teach a class and i'll be back to the session at 1120.
Renee Clary: sounds good Okay, you can stop sharing your screen now we'll move on to our next presenter who is our convener extraordinary tricia Kelly will talk about.
Renee Clary: Multi dimensional campus wide initiatives that extend geoscience education impact beyond the classroom.
Patricia Kelley: So, are you all able to see my screen.
Renee Clary: We are.
Patricia Kelley: Okay excellent alright, so this was really fun i'm so glad we decided to organize this session and have gotten such a great response i'm going to be talking about.
Patricia Kelley: Two programs that we think can be models to other institutions unc wgs science faculty and students have been involved in.
Patricia Kelley: two initiatives that i'm talking going to be talking about here that extend beyond the classroom across the campus and even out into the Community, and these are models, we think for Trans disciplinary high impact campus wide efforts.
Patricia Kelley: And i'll be talking about the evolution learning community and the sustainability initiative, the evolution learning community.
Patricia Kelley: is something that took place more than a decade ago, in which I was heavily involved, and it was.
Patricia Kelley: created to recognize the Darwin anniversaries so 2009 was the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin.
Patricia Kelley: And it also mark the 150th anniversary of publication of on the origin of species, so that was the reason behind this and in developing the lc as i'll refer to it, our goal was to create a dialogue.
Patricia Kelley: Across campus and within the Community on the scientific social and moral significance of evolution.
Patricia Kelley: and also to raise awareness of the importance of evolution in the natural and social sciences, but also to demonstrate that evolution also.
Patricia Kelley: had an important relationship to philosophical historical artistic and literary modes of reflection, which is sort of unexpected.
Patricia Kelley: Now, in any educational initiative, of course, we want to promote learning and here was both in and out of the classroom and we also wanted to make connections to the broader community.
Patricia Kelley: So the llc was really a grassroots effort it started with a small group of faculty led by Tom Schmid, who is in the Center of the.
Patricia Kelley: photo here, he was chair of philosophy and religion, and he called a small group together and the group just kept growing and growing as as we made our intentions well known across campus.
Patricia Kelley: So this was actually five years before before the bulk of the celebrating.
Patricia Kelley: We organized subcommittees to brainstorm kinds of activities and events on courses, we wanted to do and we soon realized that that this was was.
Patricia Kelley: getting out of hand, we needed a strong structure to to govern this effort, so a three person Executive Council was elected, and the leaders were they on the call from anthropology on the left, Tom Schmidt and then I from on a paleontologist and my research and my teaching is.
Patricia Kelley: is strongly connected to evolution so and I was chosen to or I got talked into being the overall administrator of the llc.
Patricia Kelley: and assisting me in this was Christie versace some of you may know her she's now at Georgia state, but she was then my PhD student.
Patricia Kelley: And she served as our administrative assistant So the first thing we had to do was to find money to help support all of our activities, so we began badgering the administration for support and.
Patricia Kelley: We knew that we wanted to do a large initiative that that covered the entire campus and that reached out into the Community, and so we our first step was to get other people on board, so the deans of all the colleges and schools.
Patricia Kelley: We brought in a bunch of centers that at the university also we brought in public service, which includes continuing studies and they were a major partner in our efforts.
Patricia Kelley: The provost was a biologist and he was very excited about what we were planning and so he provided a lot of financial support.
Patricia Kelley: For a lecture series and for mini grants to faculty administrative support, etc, and the Faculty senate also passed a resolution in honor are in recognizing this three year celebration that we were planning.
Patricia Kelley: Now, not all of our activities were out of the classroom out of the box, we did have a lot of traditional courses so, for instance, the the final year to.
Patricia Kelley: of our initiative we had over 100 evolution related courses in 18 different departments and, of course, there were a lot of science courses on evolution.
Patricia Kelley: But we also had courses in the humanities, we had courses in in the arts, so it was was really quite remarkable, the courses that that people came up with, so I think what was unusual here was the breadth of the courses and we had some some rather unusual topics like evolution and music.
Patricia Kelley: The lc also included a broad range of activities that you wouldn't find in a normal classroom, and so I will give you a number of our examples of other activities that we did.
Patricia Kelley: We had a Darwin scholars lecture series and departments submitted proposals to bring in speaker that had something to do with evolution.
Patricia Kelley: across a variety of different disciplines some of the more famous people we brought in, where the an anthropologist Richard leaky and the biologist Eo Wilson.
Patricia Kelley: I made sure that there were several geologists and paleontologist like niles eldridge and Dave desktop ski and others who were part of.
Patricia Kelley: The lecture series also and the we caught we partnered with the honors college they organized reading groups for many of the speakers that had had published books and so prior to the speaker arrived arriving we had discussion groups of of their work.
Patricia Kelley: We have a lot of outreach activities that extended out into the Community unc w has something they call college day, where one Saturday.
Patricia Kelley: People come in from the Community and are able to to attend lectures by my periods faculty members, so we participated in that continuing studies had something that called super Saturday, where it was a whole Saturday, full of evolution lectures.
Patricia Kelley: faculty also gave talks for continuing studies and participated in panel discussions I taught a course on evolution and creationism that that took place for four weeks over.
Patricia Kelley: One one fall.
Patricia Kelley: Evelyn evolution was also featured in our unc w journals we have a couple of journals that we published that have a broad subscriber subscriber ship, and so we had evolution issues of those particular journals.
Patricia Kelley: And there were also research grants for faculty who were doing research related to evolution and also for for faculty who wanted to make changes in their courses.
Patricia Kelley: That had some some focus on evolution.
Patricia Kelley: And we had a lot of culturally bounced the La theater works came in and put on a performance of the great Tennessee monkey trial at asner played the role of Clarence darrow so that was exciting.
Patricia Kelley: Maybe some of you have seen the movie flock of Todos fly from dodo says about the intelligent design controversy, and so we had a screening of that with the executive producer.
Patricia Kelley: I mentioned that there was an art course that was involved in the llc the graphic design instructor made all the student art projects that semester relates to evolution and we had an art exhibition of the results.
Patricia Kelley: The library put on rare book exhibit related to Taiwan.
Patricia Kelley: And then, one of the more unusual things that we did was to hold a multi disciplinary student conference.
Patricia Kelley: Where students came from across the US and we even have one participant who, who was from Australia and they presented research that was related to evolution, a lot of it was in the sciences, but, but not all of it we covered other areas also.
Patricia Kelley: And then my favorite part was getting to go to the Galapagos we had two honors classes in the spring of 2009 that we're focused on evolution.
Patricia Kelley: The course that I taught was entitled the shaping of Darwin geology and paling geology and biology of the Galapagos and then their political science Professor taught one on conservation in the Galapagos.
Patricia Kelley: And the students spent the Semester preparing for the TRIPS of the Galapagos my students read a lot of materials from darwin's writings which are now online.
Patricia Kelley: And they they studied different animals from the Galapagos and we put together a field guide based on their research that they had done.
Patricia Kelley: And then we partnered with continuing studies so you can see our entire group is down there in the right hand corner and they don't all look like honor students.
Patricia Kelley: We we partnered with continuing studies and we charged continuing studies students more so that we could make it more affordable for the unc w students.
Patricia Kelley: But it also meant meant that we to faculty members could could bring our families along, so I got to take my son in the upper right hand corner and my husband and and yeah it was it was great it was wonderful, so I think, all in all, the llc was a huge endeavor.
Patricia Kelley: involved a lot of people across a lot of disciplines working together, and it was very successful experience for us all.
Patricia Kelley: i'll talk about the sustainability initiative now, and this is what my co author is involved in he's a Roger shoe he's Chair of the sustainability Committee, and this is an ongoing ongoing.
Patricia Kelley: initiative so it's cross disciplinary it has a lot of similarities to the llc in that a lot of people from a lot of different disciplines are involved in that.
Patricia Kelley: And policy entire campus that extends out into the Community as well, but I think one thing that is different about the sustainability initiative is that it's.
Patricia Kelley: it's a lot more student driven, whereas the llc was really faculty driven the sustainability initiative initiative expanded from.
Patricia Kelley: Only one course of about a decade ago to now we have 76 programs that have courses in them related to sustainability there's a minor and, as I, as I mentioned students are very strongly involved in the leadership.
Patricia Kelley: So, to talk about the out of the classroom and out of the box activities of the sustainability initiative i'll be reviewing four different areas, the restoration of natural areas stormwater management some sustainability efforts and then energy conservation as part of this, of course.
Patricia Kelley: The unc w campus and and the city have have been hit very hard by Hurricane Florence we missed a whole semester of teaching.
Patricia Kelley: And 240 trees were down by Hurricane Florence on campus we've also lost trees to beetle infestation.
Patricia Kelley: And as well unc w is growing very rapidly so there's lots of new construction trees have been cut down to build new classrooms and and housing and other facilities.
Patricia Kelley: So one emphasis of the sustainability initiative has been tree planting and over 2700 streets have been planted by students on campus and in the surrounding community.
Patricia Kelley: were also involved in stormwater management again with partnership with the city of wilmington also the north Carolina coastal federation.
Patricia Kelley: EPA provided grant money to construct for rain gardens students have been involved in planting and monitoring the rain guidance which happened he proved effective at reducing runoff.
Patricia Kelley: We also have a sustainability garden that is planted and attended and harvested by students and faculty as well, and in the right hand picture.
Patricia Kelley: Roger shoe my co authors is shown there at the top right the harvest supports local food banks, including a unc w food pantry.
Patricia Kelley: And it's been so successful that their plans being completed now for garden expansion, this will provide additional opportunities for student engagement, but also for outreach to the.
Patricia Kelley: Community and, interestingly, our garden also has beehives.
Patricia Kelley: The the beast story is so interesting that it was even made into an award winning film keepers of the bees, a group of view and CW students were so passionate about about our be preservation that they formed a big club, and we will have beehives in our garden.
Patricia Kelley: Sustainability includes transportation there's a bike share program that's available for students and faculty and staff to use 24 seven.
Patricia Kelley: biking, of course, is is very popular wilmington is extremely flat so it's easy to get around by bike and we have.
Patricia Kelley: We have a partnership with the city and the county to extend the Cross city trail to to go around campus and you can see a ribbon cutting ceremony there with the Mayor and other city officials opening the trail.
Patricia Kelley: And and energy conservation of courses, is very important unc system sustainability policy policy has a goal of zero carbon emissions by the year 2050.
Patricia Kelley: As I mentioned the university is growing and so energy demand, you would expect to be increasing but we're trying to keep it under control.
Patricia Kelley: And so there's an annual greenhouse gas inventory and that students are involved in in gathering the information for and you can see the unc w is is doing pretty well.
Patricia Kelley: In terms of student engagement, we have the green initiative fun that was created.
Patricia Kelley: After request of students students asked to have their fees increased to help with sustainability, which I think is pretty amazing.
Patricia Kelley: And the monies from this fund support student student salaries, we have peer educators who go around and talk to to classes and other venues.
Patricia Kelley: Sustainability insurance they're supposed to competition and money is also provided in the form of mini grants to students and faculty collaborating to to produce sustainability products projects.
Patricia Kelley: So in conclusion, I think we, we have had two very successful examples of campus wide multi dimensional learning initiatives.
Patricia Kelley: That involves a geosciences and they've been a lot of work, you really have to be committed to it, you need committed faculty and students to carry on something like this lot of planning and coordination.
Patricia Kelley: Cooperation o'clock across disciplines departments have to be willing to share workload and share.
Patricia Kelley: Financial support and you need a lot, you need to be able to talk your administration into.
Patricia Kelley: into providing support also and we've been able to do that, I think geosciences are key to some of the most critical issues that society faces today, and so there are lots of opportunities out there for other institutions to develop similar large scale programs thanks very much.
Renee Clary: Thank you so much trisha for that, I do have a quick question, I think we have maybe just 30 seconds or So what is the general environment of your community with regards to evolution is there push back.
Patricia Kelley: Yes, we would have these super Saturday sessions and people would show up and they would ask some sometimes antagonizing questions.
Patricia Kelley: I always felt that I could handle them well because I could say you know my husband is a Presbyterian minister I teach Bible study you know every Sunday and I teach up wish and during the week and it's not not a conflict but yeah it's.
Patricia Kelley: But well wilmington is is more liberal, of course, any college town, but yeah North carolina's not necessarily an easy place to teach evolution so so that was one of the things that we thought was so important about having the llc and reaching out to the Community.
Renee Clary: It sounds like a fantastic Program.
Patricia Kelley: It was really fun.
Renee Clary: And I think now you're going to introduce.
Patricia Kelley: Our next speaker is indeed here okay.
Patricia Kelley: So let me.
Patricia Kelley: Get back to my schedule here, yes we've got Graham Andrews and with a host of co authors and he's going to be presenting and he has a pre recorded presentation.
Patricia Kelley: it's entitled getting to grips with untouchable samples online 3D geological specimen models of skip on sketch fab.com now i'm the person who has to to share my screen so Graham i'm sorry it will take me a second to to.
Patricia Kelley: To find this on my screen.
Patricia Kelley: just about got it so i'm going to be playing this.
Patricia Kelley: Is my graduate students a Western she firstly colleagues.
Patricia Kelley: hang on a second.
Patricia Kelley: My graduate students.
Patricia Kelley: I don't think it's working.
Renee Clary: We don't see the screen share yet.
Okay.
Patricia Kelley: Okay i'm sharing my screen, are you seeing.
Patricia Kelley: Okay.
Patricia Kelley: i'm my graduate students a Western Michigan University College state.
Patricia Kelley: Good to try to spread the word about using digital rocks and minerals samples undergraduate teaching.
Patricia Kelley: Online Nigeria cool that.
And in the future.
Patricia Kelley: He part of that is the digital art materials online 3D database shorten demon.
Patricia Kelley: This is look at the Google spreadsheet which service catalog.
Patricia Kelley: We end up with a number of tabs.
Patricia Kelley: You can see there's minerals are seeing now.
Patricia Kelley: igneous rocks.
Patricia Kelley: morphic rocks sedimentary kind of rocks folder hawks and a couple of other types of.
Patricia Kelley: minerals.
Patricia Kelley: common to all the samples URL you can do the model with a description and then unique to minerals, we have chemical family crystal system.
Patricia Kelley: that's available, this is just data that's provided through digital models on sketch fab.com.
Patricia Kelley: To look at one of those models now.
Patricia Kelley: select one click on the URL.
Patricia Kelley: And that then takes us to get.
Patricia Kelley: The model loads relatively quickly.
Patricia Kelley: Look through.
Patricia Kelley: The igneous we got more detail it's common for those and also look to see if the models downloadable.
Patricia Kelley: let's look at the earth materials in sketch FAB and a bit more.
Patricia Kelley: Successful sketch is so this is the landing page you've opened on trial.
Patricia Kelley: And you can see a variety of animals do you like most users.
Patricia Kelley: The models ride small icon get an initial he can rotate it and then there's a variety statistical metadata they both see that a total of 70,000 views of models that we've made.
Patricia Kelley: It 245 models 260 times also liked and then particularly important with collections.
Patricia Kelley: collections are.
Patricia Kelley: open for your opportunity to find other people's models, as well as your own and assign them to any kind of melodic route so as you can see here we've igneous rocks structured ology.
Patricia Kelley: crystallography crystal structure and you just sign China nice model you just sign it to a collection of your own, so this is slow, because the structure is models, with a black background or all get by diversity amy.
Patricia Kelley: excellent job with populating sketch FAB with that geological samples.
Patricia Kelley: Are we're getting down to some made it.
Patricia Kelley: So you can click on a particular model.
Patricia Kelley: That opens.
Patricia Kelley: i'm a little slow occasionally and they see a typical model three horse.
Patricia Kelley: living a silicate I can edit 3D proper settings of properties that you use your camp, you can say they've been assigned to Nice oh silicate by somebody else.
Patricia Kelley: or suggested models and then in the model itself i've added annotations to the numbers make them to bring up text or even pictures or URLs and they can be cycled through.
Patricia Kelley: model be can be manipulated zoom in and out and rotates around three axes.
Patricia Kelley: The most important thing is all this is free to the end user, it only costs money, if you want how.
Patricia Kelley: Enough storage space that you want upload a lot of models, they can be accessed for free.
Patricia Kelley: You can see, this one is downloadable.
Patricia Kelley: that's where you would add a to collections attitude and or samples.
Patricia Kelley: You could create a new collection.
Patricia Kelley: It can be embedded into websites, you can share it on social media or via email.
Patricia Kelley: Or you get another way to get the embed code.
Patricia Kelley: You can also text and see that there's a creative commons attribution means that it's available for people to use.
Patricia Kelley: Any appropriate way they see fit.
Patricia Kelley: You can cycle through the collections, this is moving off chronologically the next model me and.
Patricia Kelley: I right aren't assigned.
Patricia Kelley: And then we click back out scroll through or this other people sometimes now.
Patricia Kelley: pull models basically the same way.
Patricia Kelley: We head back up the hierarchy back to the review page look at the.
Patricia Kelley: collections that I have subscribed to these are collections that other people have been, for example, is a ubc lab collection Queens University in Canada as well or mineral collection.
Patricia Kelley: And then I will get an alert both by email in sketch FAB itself anytime that model to add it to those collections.
Patricia Kelley: Your hand samples from university meanings collection, many of which their own products, but it also includes models by other people, could you.
Patricia Kelley: see some of the more innovative ways of these can use, so we have the queue at ground for Teutonic igneous rocks and they've taken the models very nicely sort of face them over the appropriate fields in the queuing diagram.
Patricia Kelley: nothing worse than noting is that this is very easily used.
Patricia Kelley: cell phones and tablets, and if you have an iPhone or an iPad it will integrate with the virtual reality, you see, you can actually.
Patricia Kelley: And then manipulated the same way that the pokemon go game worked have it actually impressed across superimposed across.
Patricia Kelley: A picture of yourself.
Patricia Kelley: These are people who have i'm following I will get an update if they had any models and then these are people who were following wvu.
Patricia Kelley: So they will get an alert.
Patricia Kelley: The videos you're seeing now or gift, the news.
Patricia Kelley: This is the simplest way to get and automatically little kitty video it's a little obscure fine that's why i'm putting it under sketch FAB labs.
Patricia Kelley: there's a variety of sort of.
Patricia Kelley: Alpha and beta mode programs there's the method reality option like I mentioned but come across and there's if export.
Patricia Kelley: So it's a very simple interface, you lose a 3D model.
Patricia Kelley: You can enter the URL or you can just search by criteria search bar lemon like for and scroll down through anything that's.
Patricia Kelley: been tagged as eliminate.
Patricia Kelley: See there's actually a lot.
Patricia Kelley: And it opens up.
Patricia Kelley: Our modal like Su more pirate and then we can select controls on the right hand side, the resolution.
Patricia Kelley: The duration of a video of the format, the stick if format, these are very useful to into PowerPoint this is really, this is the only way I find that you get a rooted in model into PowerPoint.
Patricia Kelley: Otherwise it just comes through as a static image that you would then have to leave PowerPoint to go to the sketch that website, this gives a standalone.
Patricia Kelley: gif file that's relatively small.
Patricia Kelley: In terms of the numbers of models that are available.
Patricia Kelley: Our catalog demon 3D catalog has over 2200 models in it.
Patricia Kelley: there's certainly more than that lead faculty have.
Patricia Kelley: is with us more more classes have taken this here we can see this, which can be used in all my classes during Kovac pandemic.
Patricia Kelley: So these are just some examples from my classes geology one a long mineralogy section, this is an open access system in top hat, where I basically made a living textbook and you see that i've been bedded silica tetrahedron.
Patricia Kelley: The section on silicate.
Patricia Kelley: score like through top hats are very nice system but typical most online platforms.
Patricia Kelley: here's an example from the mini in the UAE I see university, where they have all of the different.
Patricia Kelley: silicate groups represented see scale and again labels took on those numbers and he wants to bring up the name of each of those groups and then it's just a really nice way to.
Patricia Kelley: integrate its color images, but make them manipulate students find this very popular.
Patricia Kelley: The the active labels are really useful they can be embedded with questions rather all questions or a link to an actual quiz.
Patricia Kelley: And it's a really good way, the best way to easily integrate crystal graphic models to subsea something that students struggle with able to visualize.
Patricia Kelley: i'm not unique but it's a good way to do it, this is now I from my earth materials class this semester are using Google classroom and Google quizzes I can say what I can say questions with a link to sketch FAB.
Patricia Kelley: In this case, the question was how many cleavages that that mineral have.
Patricia Kelley: To go down to the next one, is what type of phaedra are these click on the model and bring out sample that hopefully students will get.
Patricia Kelley: The minimal routine.
Patricia Kelley: And again you're not limited to using your own mobile, you can use anybody's models you're not having to download a show ish copyright lot more information on holidays are built to work USA today article tember 2020.
Patricia Kelley: we're finished with the final thoughts, a common question I get is one of the hot the hands on tactile experience student but they're missing out on the monthly.
Patricia Kelley: And I would agree it is not the same as handling them all rock festival in the lab, however, does not mean that this is no use whatsoever, I would say.
Patricia Kelley: That is false what's essential about the hands on time period what's important is it teaching students, how to physically manipulate the piece of rock.
Patricia Kelley: Where they scratch and enroll against this run late, I would say no, we should be even higher than that it's but educated students understand what the results are strict test is.
Patricia Kelley: So you can provide the result street test, for example, you say that imitate unknown sample that you notice it became a tight has read St information provided to students, they still have.
Patricia Kelley: A little sample to look at still do visual observations on by providing them information physical test it can still integrate.
Patricia Kelley: can provide information about half our SF best street cetera et cetera a little larger than to work with the visual models.
Patricia Kelley: and put it together, it allows for hypothesis formation and test which is hopefully what we are aiming to achieve with students, as what we're aiming for, can they integrate information.
Patricia Kelley: And can they form hypotheses that big test so many questions i'll ask would be okay here's a model sample you can see its color you see it's habit, maybe divide cleavages I provide something.
Patricia Kelley: For some information about streak and then rather than asking what is it i'd say what additional tests for tests could be done to confirm that it is middle X or men or Y or Z.
Patricia Kelley: I sort of work on the basis of students have ready access to their textbook but also to Google media, so that we should take advantage of that and find a way that they can really concentrate on combining data from different sources gather.
Patricia Kelley: So hands on tactile experience is great it's essential undoubtedly for some students experience it, but I would say it's not essential for all and that it shouldn't be an impediment or at least absolute veto on expanding maintaining and expanding.
Patricia Kelley: web resources and online education that we've done, for example, it's been done very successfully before, and especially during covered with.
Patricia Kelley: Various virtual microscopes witchcraft do not have the same exact same way with activity but similar issue, so not point, thank you for your attention and I wish we could all be together at the meeting, they will see each other.
Patricia Kelley: Okay, thanks, very much for pre recording that that would have been hard to to do on site, I think.
Patricia Kelley: too I we've got two minutes for questions and our author is here so.
Patricia Kelley: I am, I have a question if someone else awesome um.
Patricia Kelley: So you've really created an open access textbook or you know what we would call open educational resources Is that correct.
Graham Andrews WVU: Yes.
Graham Andrews WVU: I started with the.
Graham Andrews WVU: salt lake city Community college open access.
Graham Andrews WVU: Physical geology book and it comes with a creative commons license so it's it's fully editable.
Graham Andrews WVU: And I started, by changing the case studies to more local examples, because they're actually using things in utah and then realized that having a hosted on a on an educational platform.
Graham Andrews WVU: They really made it easy to change anything that you wanted so rather than having the static mental images or all and stick molecular images I just embedded the.
Graham Andrews WVU: The 3D models.
Graham Andrews WVU: Really really quite simple when you've got something to work from that you can that you can edit rather than starting from a blank page.
Patricia Kelley: I think that's fantastic and the open educational resources i've been learning more about them, because my daughter's a librarian librarian and they're wonderful in that you can modify them to fit your your own circumstances, and you can also show students, you know.
Patricia Kelley: link to students better to you can show a diverse student groups, instead of you know just the examples that are provided in your in your sex so.
Graham Andrews WVU: yeah there's no I was using the physical geology from salt lake city, but calum bentley as a historical geology and Dexter Perkins North Dakota just released the mineralogy somebody.
Graham Andrews WVU: um I.
Graham Andrews WVU: I hear I believe there's a structural geology lab not in the watch.
Patricia Kelley: Excellent that's really good to hear, well, I think we need to go on now my.
Patricia Kelley: Co convener co organizer is our next speaker and a cleric and she's going to be talking about informal learning integration within formal geosciences instruction leveraging field investigations for Community engaged learning and geo heritage appreciation and virtual classrooms.
Patricia Kelley: looks like you're ready to go renee.
Renee Clary: Okay.
Renee Clary: It wouldn't unmute unmute for me.
Renee Clary: Let me know when I hit the presentation mode, whether you can see, the correct screen let's see.
Renee Clary: As soon as I flip it.
Renee Clary: Is that good.
Patricia Kelley: Yes, okay.
Renee Clary: Okay um so i'm in the department of geosciences at Mississippi State University and i've taught.
Renee Clary: Both traditional and a lot of online classes.
Renee Clary: And, of course, a coven presented us with a unique opportunity, because we all were teaching online classes for a while, so i'd like to speak a little bit of how we can.
Renee Clary: Research or how we can optimize Community engaged learning and geo heritage appreciation in virtual classrooms, especially those that we hadn't intended on being virtual.
Renee Clary: We rally around the slogan that geology is best taught in the field, and these excursions these field excursions do provide our on campus students, an opportunity to apply and synthesize and evaluate the course content.
Renee Clary: The late Jim wander see and I did a lot of research on whether or not we can do that in online environments as well, I was teaching online classes.
Renee Clary: And it does turn out that you can have self directed research for students and online classes, if you read the recent GSA today you saw the article of.
Renee Clary: milani arthur's where she was looking at how do we bring the field, the virtual field during the code mid semester, so we have research that with the.
Renee Clary: The Community engaged learning piece, we can use the field to actually benefit a Community partner and i'll talk about that in just a minute, and these field investigations can develop a geo heritage appreciation, especially at the local environment for the students.
Renee Clary: I become pretty passionate about Community engaged learning, I signed up in 2018 to be a fellow of Community engaged learning at Mississippi State University and I was completely naive.
Renee Clary: about what this all entailed it turns out that what we think of often is Community engaged learning is more of a service learning and not necessarily Community engaged learning.
Renee Clary: There are four basic tenants of Community engaged learning that the activities have to address the learning objectives.
Renee Clary: it's not an add on activity and we have to have reciprocity with that Community Partner we're simply not doing something for somebody else or for an organization.
Renee Clary: The students have to participate in ongoing reflection, but most of our scientists and.
Renee Clary: Our engineers don't like to reflect, so we call those reports they have to come up with reports on this project, and then there has to be a dissemination of learning experiences.
Renee Clary: My first concern was how do I use these Community engaged activities to address the learning objectives I typically thought of things such as habitat for humanity or gleaning sweet potatoes for the local.
Renee Clary: Food pantry and I teach Paleo and tectonics courses So how do I come up with a great Community engaged learning experience.
Renee Clary: The good news, though, is that if we do this correctly, we can integrate and apply the course content and actually address some local community concerns.
Renee Clary: Our students become actively engaged and female students prefer that Community orientation more and more institutions or recording Community engaged learning as a form of scholarly expression.
Renee Clary: And we develop stewards of the Communities again we're not doing something for a community, we are working with the Community to solve a problem.
Renee Clary: And morton posed of that perhaps land grant universities, such as Miss Mississippi State University have an obligation to address Community concerns.
Renee Clary: I first implemented Community engaged learning a pseudo implementation in an online course that did not work well.
Renee Clary: We have time and you have questions I can talk a little bit about that, and then in the fall of 2018 I implemented this in my principles of Paleo ecology course, and it was a phenomenal the students.
Renee Clary: enjoyed it, they said that you know they could apply what they learned and it just was overwhelmingly positive for them.
Renee Clary: So you know i'm thinking ahead and in spring 2020 i'm going to try again and an online environment and i'm also going to implement Community engaged learning in micro paleontology.
Renee Clary: And we all know what happened right so suddenly my micro Paleo course which was an on campus course had to move online.
Renee Clary: Our Community partner with the micro Paleo course was the Union county heritage museum and you can see the front of that in the lower right.
Renee Clary: They were very passionate about a site in blue springs Mississippi nearby it was privately owned, but the owner allows people to collect there and it's a great fossil site it's a it's a coon creek.
Renee Clary: Facility for us area so before covert here, we were able to visit Union county heritage museum and collect sediment samples for the micro Paleo course and some macro.
Renee Clary: samples as well, and the students were even able to process those sediment samples, the Community engaged learning piece was that they were tasked with coming up with a site solution for preservation for collecting, but a sustainable solution, and then, of course, here comes covered.
Renee Clary: Unfortunately, the visit to campus by our Community engaged learning partner was cancelled, no one was allowed on campus.
Renee Clary: And the communication unfortunately completely stopped with our Community engaged partner, the fossil the micro fossil investigation was completely improvised and if you have questions, we can talk about that it was very interesting.
Renee Clary: And, in the end the students had to propose their Community engaged learning solutions via video they recorded some brief videos of themselves and they uploaded those and we voted on them as a class which were the best solutions.
Renee Clary: Meanwhile, in the geology of North America course we partnered with Charles Lindgren who has some science of sand websites.
Renee Clary: We have done the same project before in this class, but for the Community engaged learning piece.
Renee Clary: Charlie suggested that we also develop some resources for K 12 teachers, far from help our for homeschooling parents or even the public, who was interested.
Renee Clary: In using the sand samples and there you see the Mississippi university Mississippi State University tab where you can access all of our singing samples and our projects.
Renee Clary: And even though covert hit there shouldn't be an issue right.
Renee Clary: Well, unfortunately, the students were impacted even as online students because none of us live in isolation, many of them had other jobs and coven.
Renee Clary: presented new constraints on their jobs, of course, they were members of families, and it was just a really tough time, in the end we did have the five minute video presentations at the conclusion of the project and we voted on those as a class.
Renee Clary: The response to Community engaged learning during that spring kovats semester was less positive, but the majority of students still liked it.
Renee Clary: From content analysis some stable themes emerged one positive one negative.
Renee Clary: On the positive side students recognize that the Community engaged learning piece promoted the critical thinking meaningful learning and gave them real world.
Renee Clary: problems that they could propose solutions to on the negative both classes students in both classes remarked that it's a large time commitment and the C e l partner should just do the work themselves.
Renee Clary: So here we come into the fall 20 2020 semester, and the principles of Paleo ecology course was scheduled to be taught on campus it's an on campus class.
Renee Clary: But with the restrictions it was moved online it does have a cl course designation, so we have to have a Community engaged learning piece, and it.
Renee Clary: It was moved online because of the social distancing constraints, there were no in person Paleo laboratories, we don't have sets for everyone to to examine.
Renee Clary: And there were no in person field trips, so this is our opportunity can an effective virtual Community engaged learning project.
Renee Clary: be designed to correspond with the project that we had on campus and engage those traditional on campus students who had not signed up to take this course online.
Renee Clary: The project is that students have to collect fossils and self directed research so that online research.
Renee Clary: was really valuable here and how we could do that and a couple of local sites were suggested including our campus outcrop.
Renee Clary: There you see the blue springs, the lower image students could go there and they could also go to our Community engaged partner site on this is the w m browning cretaceous fossil park.
Renee Clary: Students had to identify the fossils and then analyze mississippi's cretaceous Paleo biodiversity and compare that with the modern biodiversity as their course project.
Renee Clary: Our partner was the cretaceous fossil Park, it is the only fossil park in Mississippi and for our decoded we were going to have a 25th anniversary rededication ceremony in May, and that was cancelled.
Renee Clary: students were tasked with hopefully going to visit the site it's a nice place to go, especially in the summer, when it's hot you get in the stream and use it for fossils shark's teeth are really big.
Renee Clary: And as part of that community engaged learning piece they had critical reflections or reports and their solution on how to optimize this site for visitors for teachers, they presented those solutions to the Community partner at the end of the Semester.
Renee Clary: I had been to the site before those are my children when they were in high school there now in professional schools but.
Renee Clary: they're really fun excursion and Athena nagel and I had been and took the selfie right before the sign behind us was knocked down so there's a new sign now but it's a nice site it's it's underutilized not as many people know about it outside of the area.
Renee Clary: Our guest partners, including our Community and cage learning partners, excuse me included Doug flory there you see Doug in a video interview.
Renee Clary: We also brought in George Phillips from the Mississippi museum of natural sciences and we were able to interview a few teachers in the area who use this site pretty regularly to bring their.
Renee Clary: Their students their classes outside of coven our interactions though we're all electronic we could not give access to our Community partners to our learning management systems so most of these comments and conversations went through me.
Renee Clary: But with the student questions, we were able to post some resources, including recent developments as far as installation of benches and tables, as well as the science standards for Mississippi teachers, if any, students, wanted to go that route.
Renee Clary: The final presentations were done via video, and unfortunately I had to upload all of those to Mississippi state's fire locker and share them with our Community partner.
Renee Clary: But Doug floor he did vote on the best solutions and we had quite a range of solutions one student thought the area needed a bathroom and another student built a digital elevation model of for us and.
Renee Clary: possible changes in the site and one student propose that we really needed a different website, a more interactive website for that area.
Renee Clary: When we look at the results, the project scores of both the Paleo environmental.
Renee Clary: And the Community engaged learning projects were the same they were essentially identical statistically similar.
Renee Clary: And the students affirm the value of that independent fossil collecting and the Paleo Environmental Reconstruction for applying the course content they photograph their specimens instead of turning them in as they typically did in the past.
Renee Clary: When we looked at the content analysis of the reflections and the end of semester surveys some stable themes emerged.
Renee Clary: Students said that these field excursions and the Community engaged learning increase their understanding of the local environment.
Renee Clary: It facilitated their connections between the Marine fossils they were collecting higher sea levels and possibly warmer climates and the fast.
Renee Clary: and students said that it resulted in an appreciation of the local to heritage.
Renee Clary: So, for example, one student remark that the student lived on the coast, and it was a five and a half hour drive and yet here at browning cretaceous fossil park you collect these marine fossils.
Renee Clary: Another student remark it, this is 200 miles away from the ocean, you know it's amazing, you know that we're collecting these marine fossils and this class taught the student why.
Renee Clary: The diversity of sharks in the area was also a comment that was received and students recognize that at Mississippi state we're right on top of this, fossil loves pasta liver a strata, and it was a lot easier to find fossils than they originally believed.
Renee Clary: As far as the Community engaged learning piece the students recognized, it was a real life, application and an added meaning to the course.
Renee Clary: They thought that this was an opportunity for them to do something they no longer asked why am I in Paleo and Paleo ecology Why am I taking these courses.
Renee Clary: They could contribute a solution to a problem and the students also remarked that this fossil park site show was able to show the public some content that many people don't really think about that Mississippi was underwater during the cretaceous.
Renee Clary: So I found that within virtual classrooms even those that that were unintended to be virtual classrooms the students responded well to the field investigations and the Community engaged partnerships that leverage the course content.
Renee Clary: If you have any questions that we can't get to please feel free to reach out i'm happy to talk about this and also if you're passionate about GEO heritage.
Renee Clary: GSA connects 2021 where we will be face to face right in portland, we will have a party on GEO heritage and as part of our party session we will be having a town hall meeting, where we hope to hear perspectives on.
Renee Clary: How to preserve GEO heritage, how to sustainably incorporate GEO heritage into our classrooms how to build an appreciation for to heritage, so thank you so much.
Patricia Kelley: We do have a couple minutes for questions if anybody has a question to ask.
Patricia Kelley: Do you think the the recommendations that were made about park optimization will be carried out by the park.
Renee Clary: Yes, so the.
Renee Clary: Community engaged learning partner really like the idea of the website.
Renee Clary: and asked when do we start, we want to continue on with the project, and I am scheduled to teach sort of a sister course which is principles of Paleo biology.
Renee Clary: And I think the Community partners want us to return and implement some of these these activities, hopefully, we will be able to actually travel as a group, to the site and have those guest speakers on site with us.
Patricia Kelley: I would think that your students, maybe could provide text for website or signage or something like that that'd be great great way to involve them.
Renee Clary: I think so, too, I think it will be an opportunity for the students and what i've seen from.
Renee Clary: all the way through fall of 2020 students really like this opportunity oftentimes they come into our classrooms and we present this content that.
Renee Clary: is important for them, you know you never know when you're going to need the content in in your job or you know your further education but it's so out of context they wonder, you know why is this important.
Renee Clary: But Community engaged learning does give them a reason for its importance we're actually helping a Community partner.
Renee Clary: With the local investigations to so many students had no idea of these areas within you know the local community, our first Community engaged learning project was at Osborne prairie in.
Renee Clary: And one of the students who was a starkville Mississippi native in the area said, I never knew this place even existed.
Renee Clary: And you know I went through elementary school in high school here so it's a great way to engage the students in the local to heritage.
Patricia Kelley: yeah that's excellent.
Patricia Kelley: hey we probably yep it's time to move on to our next talk, which will be by Scott brandy we're having a nice theme of what did we do during coven so he's going to tell you what he did.
Patricia Kelley: Talking about weathering an introductory geoscience place based education laboratory activity created during the 2020 panorama so Scott you'll need to share your screen now.
Scott Brande: All right, do you have video and my first slide as well.
Patricia Kelley: Now it looks good.
Scott Brande: Great.
Scott Brande: Let me just click one more button.
To hide.
Scott Brande: One little object here and we're ready to go.
Scott Brande: Well, like most of you during the pandemic my students were.
Scott Brande: tossed off campus living at home, many in the Birmingham City urban environment, a significant number in rural areas as well, and so that restricted the kind of teaching that we were all faced with immediately just about a year ago.
Scott Brande: I did find an opportunity to get students out where they lived whether it was urban or rural and what i'd like to do today is to share some of the.
Scott Brande: Examples and activities that I somehow put together under a fairly tight time constraints to for students to study weathering impacts and i'd like to emphasize that I teach a freshman level earth science fiscal geology class for non science students non stem students.
Scott Brande: And they're here at uab to basically satisfy one of their to lab requirements now.
Scott Brande: I want to give a shout out to Steve simpkin and his colleagues over the years, who were both developers and promoters place based education, I thought about this from time to time.
Scott Brande: But I just hadn't an opportunity before or the circumstance to develop something that I could apply right here in Birmingham Alabama for many reasons, Steve and his colleagues have.
Scott Brande: explained to us that students can develop a a different sense of place when they do it locally, as opposed to those, for example on geology field trips.
Scott Brande: Now, are used the energy at agi lab manual and I recognize that there really are sort of two large categories, into which those typical physical geology labs are based on materials.
Scott Brande: Based set of labs where students on campus would examine physical specimens and what I just call book based labs where the student is learning about the larger scale geologic features of the earth through maps web links and text.
Scott Brande: However, when we were thrown into the pandemic environment where students weren't on campus.
Scott Brande: I found it difficult to think about place based opportunities, especially for the material space labs.
Scott Brande: So, as many of you may know, I created a series of digital assets for the online mineral guide and others, but the point is that students at their home base just don't have access to the physical samples.
Scott Brande: And with regard to the book based labs well most of my students don't live within walking distance of a nice high mountain range a significant decline or even within walking distance of rivers and streams, so these were not opportunities for place based learning.
Scott Brande: Activities I did come across a number of places where weathering was built into the na GT lab but typically for a bit of context, and so I began thinking about whether weathering might be used as a subject for developing a local place based activity.
Scott Brande: weathering and erosion, of course, are important aspects of.
Scott Brande: A typical freshman level geology course, and I want to explain a little bit later that and i'll give you access to the documents.
Scott Brande: That I created on Google drive with web links for fundamental knowledge that students needed to learn before they would go out into their local environment and examine evidence for weathering.
Scott Brande: I found for online resources that were providing knowledge that students needed, you may or may not remember the very first I think general interest publication by the usgs.
Scott Brande: On the different building stones in Washington DC and the impact that acid rain and chemical pollution from automobiles has on those monuments and buildings.
Scott Brande: i'm going to introduce you also to the National Institute of standards and technology stone wall which I recently discovered it's an incredible resource online.
Scott Brande: I also ran across what's called the national building stone database, which has a lot of online resources again to provide students of background on many of these mythologies.
Scott Brande: But, most importantly, I came across the general services administration web page on Granite and that became the fundamental basis for my outside activity on weathering.
Scott Brande: Just briefly to introduce you to the nist stonewall it's composed of over 2300 samples of stone that were assembled into a collection in 1876.
Scott Brande: And then, by 1948 these stones were assembled into a standing wall that is now located on the grounds of the old national bureau of standards in gaithersburg Maryland.
Scott Brande: there's a website on the stone wall, but one of the most interesting aspects of it is that it is searchable for any particular stone that has come from 47 states and 16 countries.
Scott Brande: And so I put together a very simple visual instruction guide for students to search the stone wall, for example, for rocks from Alabama and I was surprised to find that there is an Alabama actually there are a couple of elegant or roxanne's stone wall.
Scott Brande: It is a marble number.
Scott Brande: Which is located exactly right there on the stone wall in gaithersburg Maryland and so with some online web research students in this particular activity acquire some background knowledge about weathering erosion.
Scott Brande: i've also built in access to this wonderful website on the national building stone database and that particular databases also searchable for the theologies.
Scott Brande: And particular queries and colors of rocks.
Scott Brande: The database returns hits with a lot of detailed information about every single panel of stone polished and.
Scott Brande: provided with information that goes, all the way down to PETRA graphic descriptions now I didn't send my students to these particular detailed web pages.
Scott Brande: But they certainly provide the context, if one wanted some additional information about a particular Granite or or other kind of rock that is included in the database.
Scott Brande: I mentioned that the most important a website that I ran across when I was searching for information on weathering happened come from the general services administration and i'm just going to pull this up live here.
Scott Brande: it's one single web page it's based upon Granite as a building stone and whoever put it together recognized a series of weathering impacts.
Scott Brande: On Granite that have been classified into these particular descriptive terms like blistering shipping cracking efflorescence.
Scott Brande: And so what I found is that there are exactly 12 categories of weathering impacts on Granite what I did is to put together these 12 categories into a visual guide for weathering.
Scott Brande: And I recognized by the descriptions that many of the examples of weathering that on the GSA website were described in terms of impacts on Granite.
Scott Brande: That these many of these types of weathering, in fact, our general and they can occur on many different types of rocks so I sent the students to the GSA website.
Scott Brande: I had them study these 12 categories by their words and their definitions and that became the basis for the knowledge they needed when they went out into their local neighborhood or environment looking for evidence of weathering on either man made or natural materials.
Scott Brande: So i'm going to show you examples, based upon the assignment that I created which require the students to get the knowledge they needed about weathering.
Scott Brande: And then to recognize and identify examples from that weathering classification in their local neighborhood and eventually put together a report.
Scott Brande: The text on the left of these images are the student exact student words what i've done is highlighted and bolted, the terms that relate to the GSA classification of weathering.
Scott Brande: And i'm also going to point out, with my additions on to the pictures the places that those texts relate to so, for example, this student found one of the small sculptures in a garden outside of her depart apartment and recognize that efflorescence was present in these lighter areas.
Scott Brande: Students also like this student related some of the effects of weathering to the environment, exactly at that spot so, for example, this student thought that the presence.
Scott Brande: Of that staining here was perhaps related to the dirt and the plans around the base of the statue the student also noted small fragments missing and related that to the category of chipping.
Scott Brande: This student lives in downtown Birmingham near and a neighborhood of historic structures.
Scott Brande: noted the presence of cracking and even noted must have character roller because the student noted the size of the cracks and related that to the size on the GMC website.
Scott Brande: The students also recognize the presence of efflorescence and erosion and staining.
Scott Brande: And so again, although not all, of those categories of weathering would be present at any one place, it turns out that many of these are developed.
Scott Brande: from place to place which, in a form that students could recognize this student recognized only one category of weathering obviously cracks are quite ubiquitous.
Scott Brande: And I did point out to the student, this is my addition that the student missed the presence of staining, especially because of the lighter Gray broken surfaces to the right of the slabs.
Scott Brande: Now many of the students actually tried to explain the origin of these features of weathering so, for example, I do talk about freestyle cycles in my course.
Scott Brande: in Birmingham we don't have a lot of precise cycles, but I applaud the students for drawing on their lecture and lab material in order to explain these features.
Scott Brande: This particular student, I thought was sort of interesting he was mowing the grass kicked up a rock and it actually broke a piece off of the brick which he related impact now turns out that impact is not one of the official categories.
Scott Brande: But, nonetheless, I applaud the student for recognizing that particular impact.
Scott Brande: As I said, many of these are common on manufactured materials cracking is present on a lot of the older a brick surfaces here in Birmingham.
Scott Brande: Also on the horizontal surfaces that get beaten up as in driveways, but in this particular case, the student noticed at his parents home that the carport concrete was staying in this case the student actually didn't.
Scott Brande: locate a source for the staining.
Scott Brande: Here on campus a model, a sculpture statue of a former US President was examined more closely than i've ever looked at it it's 100 meters from my building.
Scott Brande: That they left side of precedent hills statue was weathered more than the right side.
Scott Brande: And the student attributed this to perhaps the Overhanging and shading by the mini park trees on the right, the student did notice the statues quite tall, but the student did notice and bird droppings on President hills head it's a good thing that he passed away some years ago.
Scott Brande: i'm this particular student was one of the only ones to relate the feature of weathering called rising damp.
Scott Brande: Which is the movement of groundwater through capillary action in the poorest masonry and concrete any thought that that was the source of the staining ultimately on this particular structure.
Scott Brande: This student i've never seen the sculpture on campus but the artwork is apparently near one of the student dorms and the student notice that had been moved to an area exposed to the elements.
Scott Brande: So the cracks the student attributed to the location of exposure and i'm going to have to go find this i've never seen him on campus i'm not sure whether or not those cracks might have been actually a feature that the artist might have embedded in that particular sculpture or not.
Scott Brande: So what i'd like to summarize with are some quotes from student reports here are three that actually got together on zoom.
Scott Brande: And even though they lived in different parts of the state they found that weathering impacted almost all the material that they saw around them in their neighborhoods or their rural areas and they expressed the they articulated that connection between the natural impacts of weathering.
Scott Brande: To the fact that those kinds of weather impacts were the same or similar among all three locations, in other words, they all noticed cracking and other impacts of weathering and so that brought together these different.
Scott Brande: kinds of impacts as ubiquitous developments in their areas.
Scott Brande: And so, overall, many of the students found that this was not as hard example at all, it was a very easy exercise to find and relate those impacts to their local environment.
Scott Brande: So the key actually was that fourth website that I discovered and the category of 12 different kinds of weathering that initially were designed to apply to granted.
Scott Brande: But, in fact, many of these kinds of weathering applied to almost every local area so i'd like to emphasize that the the kind of thoughts that i'd had from Steve over the years about place based education actually came together.
Scott Brande: instigated by the pandemic, because I recognize that whether your curse everywhere, even in the urban and especially the rural environments, secondly.
Scott Brande: The effects of weathering over 10s or hundreds of years, even on man made materials are cumulative so if a student lives in an area of older materials.
Scott Brande: they'll probably see more impacts and the fact that the object was to go out and recognize these features and bring them together into a report.
Scott Brande: Was cognitively challenging but students rose to the challenge and ultimately put their reports together.
Scott Brande: So what i'd like to do is to just put my web link online, which I will give to you, and if you have any questions i'd be happy to.
Scott Brande: provide that but one problem I didn't realize i've got to get my screen back in order to send this to chat so that that's it here's my web link, I think we have maybe just about a minute left.
Scott Brande: And we'll be happy to take any questions.
Patricia Kelley: yep that's right.
Patricia Kelley: One minute for questions.
Patricia Kelley: Were you able to did you tried into remote learning or any other lamp activities.
Scott Brande: On Actually, I have a remote learning for my entire suite of labs for the Semester, as you may know, tricia I created digital assets for the identification of rocks and minerals.
Scott Brande: At om je je O rock meetup COM and I created online activities for all of the topics in the lab manual as well.
Patricia Kelley: that's will be a huge resource, if you can can share that is that on creative comments is.
Scott Brande: not yet because i'm working along the way, but, but if anybody wants a an online activity for any other topic I can send you the links to my documents that I have on my Google drive.
Patricia Kelley: Thank you Scott.
Scott Brande: that's great welcome.
Patricia Kelley: I think you need to stop screen sharing.
Scott Brande: There it is.
Patricia Kelley: Very good, and it's time for our next presentation by TIM dish co authored by Kelly Vance emphasizing critical field skills in an online summerfield course.
Tim Diedesch: Okay, thank you, hopefully, you all can see my my screen the PowerPoint presentation.
Patricia Kelley: Yes, it looks good.
Tim Diedesch: So yeah I guess i'm kind of flipping the script here in that we're we're going to talk about a.
Tim Diedesch: Summer online field course that we had to develop for something that would normally be in in the field course and.
Tim Diedesch: In particular, since there's not a ton of time i'd love to talk about a lot of the different aspects of this course, but since there's not.
Tim Diedesch: A lot of time i'm going to focus on one of the one particular aspect of them are the projects that we designed that I thought might be might be interesting.
Tim Diedesch: So, just a quick outline i'm going to give some background, like the timeline of development and a couple of other items.
Tim Diedesch: focus a little bit on the course design and the structure in particular focus on the kind of underlying principles that guided our.
Tim Diedesch: Decisions during the development of the course and then this is where those emphasizing critical fields skills comes into play.
Tim Diedesch: And then i'll spend the last five minutes or so talking about a Google earth our Google earth mapping project example that includes what what's maybe a unique component, which is our traverse planning component and that's The thing that i'd like to talk to you about the most.
Tim Diedesch: And then we're i'm definitely not going to have time to talk about lessons learned so i'm not going to leave anybody in suspense i'm just going to say that.
Tim Diedesch: What we learned was that doing this Google earth mapping based project with our unique traverse planning component.
Tim Diedesch: is very time consuming for the instructor and I think we gathered that it was time consuming for the students as well.
Tim Diedesch: But I do think we have some ideas for maybe how to streamline it if, God forbid, we end up in the situation again where we need to offer offer this particular this particular course.
Tim Diedesch: So, before I actually talk about the course itself, I just wanted to give a nod to the fact that.
Tim Diedesch: You know, none of the stuff that we did in this course in general is really novel or or new or anything like that.
Tim Diedesch: Google earth based geologic mapping has been around for quite a while I first learned about it in 2010 when barb tewkesbury.
Tim Diedesch: posted several of her class activities in which she had students do geologic map interpretations of Google or satellite imagery so basically you create your geologic maps.
Tim Diedesch: Based on topographic expression and color in regions where you've got nearly 100% exposure and so that's the kind of basis for these projects that we designed.
Tim Diedesch: And then, of course, as many of you know just last spring, there are hundreds of geoscientists got together to kind of design and brainstorm different ways of.
Tim Diedesch: demonstrate of developing remote field experiences and so there's all kinds of.
Tim Diedesch: Different approaches here for those of you who haven't checked this out, I would strongly encourage you to check out the resources on there, so our approach is definitely far from the only the only way of doing things.
Tim Diedesch: And then, even though that's not really directly relevant to the talk I do kind of I want to give a nod to to the portion of this community that I know has actually been working on.
Tim Diedesch: Resolving this particular problem being able to design remote field experiences for a lot longer than just the duration of the coven 19.
Tim Diedesch: So, with that in mind, just briefly show you the timeline of the of the development of the course So this was developed on an emergency basis we didn't we didn't come into this intending to develop an online.
Tim Diedesch: summerfield experience course, and so we had a relatively condensed schedule in in terms of how.
Tim Diedesch: The time that we had to develop this course so suspension of instruction at Georgia southern happened in mid March.
Tim Diedesch: And, of course, right off the BAT the geology faculty had our we had our discussion about whether or not we should offer a summer field camp alternative particular particularly to aid are graduating seniors in preventing them from having any graduation delays.
Tim Diedesch: And then April eight we had our official approval of the summer elective course and then may teen was the first day of the summer semester, so I wanted to just show this timeline to you.
Tim Diedesch: to point out to give some context for some of the decisions that we that we made and for some, and this, in many ways kind of dictated the way that we designed this course, and the way that we designed the projects.
Tim Diedesch: So the situational factors, well, we kept the this at 10 students, because there were only two instructors that were really qualified to.
Tim Diedesch: To evaluate the materials that we're going to be involved in this course, so we anticipated having materials, similar to those that you would see in a traditional field program which would be.
Tim Diedesch: geologic maps and their derivative illustrations like strat columns and cross sections and professional reports.
Tim Diedesch: We were fully online, this was early in the pandemic, and so there was no possibility for even an in person component or anything like that.
Tim Diedesch: And certainly Kelly, and myself, probably wouldn't have been comfortable doing anything in person, we opted for a mostly asynchronous format.
Tim Diedesch: Because the large portion of the Georgia southern population or low income and the information that we had at the time, suggested that an asynchronous format is a little bit more inclusive.
Tim Diedesch: Of those who might have issues with reliable Internet access or who might have financial or financial, technological barriers to access to online resources and then, of course.
Tim Diedesch: We wanted to keep in mind the written description of our summer summer field program requirement in mind in particular focused on the six credit aspects we wanted to make sure this was a rigorous course.
Tim Diedesch: So our underlying principles, then i'm not saying that this applies to every every model of an online field experience, but for our particular circumstances we.
Tim Diedesch: The base was that we said we can't create a holistic experience that's equivalent to what you would experience in a summer field program and we shouldn't try to do that.
Tim Diedesch: And so, instead, we wanted to focus on well what aspects of that field program can be recreated.
Tim Diedesch: And then maybe more importantly, are what are some skills are what are the most important skills that we can derive from from that students derived from summerfield programs that we can teach.
Tim Diedesch: and reinforce in an online setting, and so I have an asterisk next to most because i'm a field geologist by trade, and so I, I would say that all fields skills are important, but of course we needed to compromise in this particular particular circumstance.
Tim Diedesch: And so the critical field skills that we that we landed on our first and foremost 3D visualization and spatial analysis and then you're going to see as I dropped the list of the rest of these fields skills.
Tim Diedesch: These are actually kind of general technical and behavioral communication skills and so that was our kind of unique I guess vision of how field camp works is that.
Tim Diedesch: mapping geology in the field is a skill, but it's actually composed of a lot of base skills that we can emphasize in other ways, so that'd be 3D visualization spatial analysis.
Tim Diedesch: field, logistics and field data collection strategies, I have this in bold, because this is the one that we felt like our traverse planning component might have captured well.
Tim Diedesch: And then i'm just going to throw the rest of these up here again, these are these are common base level technical and behavioral skills and things that employers are looking for.
Tim Diedesch: And so those critical skills, then of course guided the design of our student learning outcomes i'm not going to go through all of these, and this is probably way too many student student learning outcomes for course but.
Tim Diedesch: i'll just point out the first two since they're related to that sort of field data collection and field logistics critical skill.
Tim Diedesch: Okay, so since I didn't mention that we were focused on helping out low or sorry.
Tim Diedesch: Dealing with low income students I figured it was worth listing the materials to show that we actually could do this for very low or no cost.
Tim Diedesch: So computer computer access is the big one, we had in our situation where we had departmental end of year funds that we could have used an emergency situation to purchase laptops for students.
Tim Diedesch: That proved to be unnecessary, we also have a departmental computer lab that we would have put together a schedule, in which we allow one student at a time to come in.
Tim Diedesch: Hence the other reason for having an asynchronous format and then the university campus wide made wi fi modifications, where they made these hot spots available to students that they could drive their cars up.
Tim Diedesch: near certain buildings and they could hang out in their cars and get their wi fi access.
Tim Diedesch: Google earth pro was used for all of the for most of the actual mapping part of this project and for the traverse planning to add, of course, it's free to download online.
Tim Diedesch: Students needed access to the Microsoft Office suite and, at least at the time, students, had access to a free student license through Georgia southern university.
Tim Diedesch: And then, this isn't of course material, but I just wanted to point out that this class was implemented fully through folio which is Georgia southern online learning management system.
Tim Diedesch: Okay, so now, I want to talk a little bit more detail, specifically about the Google earth projects and in as I talk about the setup the kind of design and then the procedures for each project.
Tim Diedesch: And the deliverables at the end i'm going to use this particular example, this is our red rock Canyon or Ricardo campground.
Tim Diedesch: mapping area, this is on the Northern edge of the mojave desert, so, if you look at the satellite image down here, you can see.
Tim Diedesch: Beautiful nearly hundred hundred percent exposure of miocene sandstone and assault flows and some pyroclastic flows then on the east edge of the map, we have a an old metamorphic basement uplift here.
Tim Diedesch: And so, at face value, or on the on the at the most basic This is very similar to the project design like I pointed out that bar tewkesbury had had posted with her class activities.
Tim Diedesch: And so we wanted to add a little bit more rigor to it and so i'm going to build to that as I described these these projects.
Tim Diedesch: So, first of all, just as a general setup we had four project areas total and our map area selection was based on.
Tim Diedesch: kind of two thoughts and the first thing was that we wanted to organize the projects thematically kind of like what you would expect to see in a field camp.
Tim Diedesch: situation, so what I mean by that is you know one project team would be sedimentary rocks and strategic graffiti and so maybe the emphasis would be on creating a very detailed strata graphic column in addition to the geologic map.
Tim Diedesch: Or you know another theme could be field relationships of intrusive igneous rocks that's what I mean by the themes.
Tim Diedesch: And then we wanted to prioritize data sets that were our own and, more importantly, we wanted to focus on where possible unpublished data sets.
Tim Diedesch: so that we could better control the information availability and the flow to the students.
Tim Diedesch: And so we provided initial instruction before the first of these major projects began, and that included lecture recordings, there were readings to.
Tim Diedesch: customize Google earth tutorials so specifically how to create these kinds of geologic maps.
Tim Diedesch: And then I designed a custom Google earth maps symbol library and the students were able to use in their projects to make their maps look a little bit more professional since they were designing them within the Google earth framework.
Tim Diedesch: Okay, so for each project, then we would issue a set of project instructions, since the Ricardo campground example is from mid semester, this includes that traverse planning component in the project instructions which i'll get to in a minute.
Tim Diedesch: And then we would provide regional geologic reports that would also include a description of map units at the end, so the students would have an idea about the geologic setting tectonic setting and the units that they were going to map.
Tim Diedesch: And then of course we needed to provide them with the base Google earth files that included a map border tilburg graphic overlay which is not.
Tim Diedesch: not included here toba graphic overlay is was important for both the mapping and for the traverse planning component.
Tim Diedesch: And then, of course, again, the since i'm using a mid semester example this example includes points of interest for traverse planning So hopefully you all can see.
Tim Diedesch: there's two thumbs tax on here one is labelled base camp and then the other one is labelled parking lot and so those were the two spots that students could start their traverses from.
Tim Diedesch: OK, so the procedure for this, then, was it students were to submit a daily traverse plan so we could do this in real time.
Tim Diedesch: But most of the students opted to do the the other version, which was to just do all of their days of traverses and submit them all at once.
Tim Diedesch: But, but I think if we were to do this again we probably want to run it as a real time type thing so either way the students would develop a daily traverse plan.
Tim Diedesch: Based on predetermine requirements that were part of that project instructions, so that would include limits on.
Tim Diedesch: The distance you could travel the elevation you could gain and, in some cases, even the number of stops you could make in a day.
Tim Diedesch: And so, these were all based off of mine and kelly's experiences from actually mapping in these areas that's how we came up with these general.
Tim Diedesch: limits, and so what you see depicted on the Ricardo campground map now is one set of students is.
Tim Diedesch: traverse plan and so all they have are for this particular map is they picked points of interest along and imaginary triggers.
Tim Diedesch: And so, in later iterations in more complex projects we actually require the students to dry out there to reverse line.
Tim Diedesch: As well as picking the points that they would stop along along the way, and so this shows a first day and then the last day, so this is day five.
Tim Diedesch: traverse, and so we would give them part of the requirements would be the set number of days to map.
Tim Diedesch: And then we would always include just like you would have in a real mapping project a spot check day, so there was always one extra day that was added that allowed them to.
Tim Diedesch: improve on any part of their math area that had poor poor data or poor control and so these traverse plans, then determine the data quality.
Tim Diedesch: And so, this is where the big the big time sync came from for the instructors, is that we would then.
Tim Diedesch: develop a set of data or compile a set of field data that was custom for those students is traverse plan and we would deliver it to them in the form of a Google or.
Tim Diedesch: Google or excuse me excel spreadsheet so what you can see here is a spreadsheet with stop numbers GPS coordinates.
Tim Diedesch: detail with the logic descriptions attitude measurements were available.
Tim Diedesch: Anything else noteworthy and then for some stops the students would also get high resolution photos that they could use to develop some of their own additional observations as well.
Tim Diedesch: And so, this was a time sink, obviously, in the terms of compiling the data, but one of the things that could be potentially shortened if we were to do this in the future is the actual traverse evaluation part of this, I think could probably be automated using.
Tim Diedesch: So our GIs has a buffer analysis tool and I think we could probably find a way to use that to automate the at least the traverse evaluation part of this, but there really is no way around compiling these these field data sets.
Tim Diedesch: And then, so at the so in the culmination of the project, then the students would use all the available resources, including these data sets that we.
Tim Diedesch: sent back to them to create the geologic maps and any derivative products that they needed to create like cross sections strat columns.
Tim Diedesch: reports were always a part of all of the projects and then students would also complete self reflections and peer review forums and the self reflections were actually kind of twofold usefulness, they were meant as true self reflections, but we also added.
Tim Diedesch: prompting questions in there, that would help us decide how we could modify the next iteration of the project to make it maybe make it easier, more straightforward for the students to follow.
Tim Diedesch: Okay, so just to summarize, then we offered we developed an offer to summer online field course on an emergency basis, this was not a planned course.
Tim Diedesch: and, primarily, we had low income students in mind, so the low income component and the.
Tim Diedesch: And the short duration are kind of what dictated the choices that we made our main course design goal was to define the critical fields skills and then try to develop activities that we can emphasize those.
Tim Diedesch: And then, one that we feel like we may be uniquely captured that isn't addressed in other types of online field activities is this field data and collection strategy component so with that I will thank you for your attention and i'm happy to take any questions.
Patricia Kelley: We do have a minute or two for questions.
Patricia Kelley: How did students respond to two.
Tim Diedesch: yeah I was afraid I was afraid.
Tim Diedesch: Somebody was going to ask that I was trying to frantically dig up.
Tim Diedesch: The the review forms and, for some reason I don't have the comments I only have student ratings of numbers categories of ratings of instruction.
Tim Diedesch: I anecdotally, I can tell you the students that that were most close to would they said that it was it was very challenging to do the traverse planning, so that would be something to keep in mind if we were going to modify the design for future use.
Patricia Kelley: You had actual geologic maps that you could compare with the maps of students came up with.
Patricia Kelley: Because you doing this.
Tim Diedesch: Oh i'm sorry.
Patricia Kelley: They compare.
Tim Diedesch: So it was it was there was a range, unfortunately I don't have a baseline since we don't actually offer a true summerfield program so I don't know what.
Tim Diedesch: The range and student performance on those usually usually is, but there was a range that I think is reflective of these students his performance in face to face classes as well.
Tim Diedesch: So some matched up very well, in fact, the one that I used on my title slide was it was an extremely good example that was a a a a plus mom.
Patricia Kelley: Okay, very good let's see I think it's time to move on, so if if you'll stop sharing TIM and now we're going to.
Patricia Kelley: continue our Kovac theme, but we're going to move into a series of posters, and they asked us to put all posters at the end of the session so are you able to play that poster renee.
Renee Clary: I can I see mackenzie is here so mackenzie do you want me to share your poster and play the video or do you want to be the pilot and zoom in on different things.
Mackenzie Ross: um you can just play it I think that's probably easiest.
Patricia Kelley: And then there'll be five minutes at the end for questions or additional comments.
Mackenzie Ross: awesome Thank you.
Patricia Kelley: seems to be muted.
Patricia Kelley: shop initiative.
Renee Clary: The scientists and before school program has.
Renee Clary: potential to impact nearly 2.3 million K 12 students.
Renee Clary: and thousands of teachers across the state of Florida scientists are before school program or such for short.
Renee Clary: focuses on building long lasting collaborative relationships between K 12 teachers and scientists, like myself, and it has the overall goal of integrating current scientific research and fake data into classroom lessons.
Renee Clary: With the advent of the coven making pandemic K 12 educational outreach and science communication had to adapt to a new virtual reality.
Renee Clary: Part of the pandemic scientists visit classrooms and utilize things like 3D prints fossils rocks and other interactive presentation materials to engage students in our research.
Renee Clary: So scientists also ensure to supplement teachers lesson plans by ensuring that their visits and virtual presentations follow Florida sunshine state standards.
Renee Clary: says current goal is adopting caitlin educational outreach and science communication for digital dissemination.
Renee Clary: As the current virtual situation has further emphasize why accessible and inclusive scientific research is necessary.
Renee Clary: What is that well by the numbers we've reached full over 16,000 capable students in over 140 schools across the state of Florida.
Renee Clary: We have 350 scientists on turn with us and growing and they have conducted well over 300 scientists visits the graphic and the lower middle showcases all of the counties across Florida, we have completed visits on the counties that are closer to be blue or darker blue.
Renee Clary: oops.
Renee Clary: Sorry.
Renee Clary: showcase visits that we conducted in the hundreds hundreds and the counties in the clean the lighter green showcase visits that are one to 10 in number.
Renee Clary: The graphic in the upper right hand corner shows what a normal virtual doesn't look like.
Renee Clary: During coven 19, this is a visit that I conducted very recently with the fourth grade classroom in South Florida.
Renee Clary: Prior to my visit we shipped off mate fordham fossil matrix to the remote students that their houses and to the students in the classroom.
Renee Clary: And they pick through this matrix with their patients discussing Florida paleontology and Florida geology.
Renee Clary: And then myself as a student the scientists zoomed in and discuss my own research as a as a paleontology master student.
Renee Clary: And we discussed Florida theology and Florida paleontology and how they intersect and then we went over all the awesome fun.
Renee Clary: And we discuss with the students, how you might go about identifying a fossil in the field, or in the laboratory and when about identifying some of their own falsifying.
Renee Clary: And this is how we learn to adapt to our new virtual reality, the first approximate 180 scientist visits or so that's that's conducted for predominantly in classrooms and science fairs.
Renee Clary: And another in person meetings like science clubs, but after March 2020 Pacific assess team had to pivot as business with virtual the issue of geoscience education and accessibility came into question.
Renee Clary: web accessibility is required by law under the Americans with Disabilities Act virtual presentations must be accessible to visually and hearing impaired.
Renee Clary: And should accommodate any other needs presented by the teacher luckily video conferencing and presentation platforms do have built in caption and audio track capabilities.
Renee Clary: And, as in my presentation about visual multimedia content should also be implemented along with those texts and audio description, so that students may be as engaged as possible with the content that scientists are providing.
Renee Clary: And there's only one of the ways that says is continuing to innovate, our virtual and hopefully in person scientist visits.
Renee Clary: assess initiative is also a product samples have K 12 education and outreach enables undergraduate and graduate students, all the way up to professional scientists, the opportunity to strengthen their engagement and communication skills.
Renee Clary: Along with promoting the accessibility inclusion from K 12 classrooms all the way up to university department, thank you very much.
Mackenzie Ross: So I didn't see the poster.
Patricia Kelley: Now you only.
Patricia Kelley: Always Thomas mackenzie's space in.
Renee Clary: Because, then I minimize it and I it kept playing i'm so sorry i'm so sorry.
Patricia Kelley: Can we see the poster now.
Renee Clary: Okay let's see, let me get out of the video.
Renee Clary: hold on Oh, my goodness okay i'm going to go back to the view the poster and i'm going to share my screen again.
Mackenzie Ross: There it is um so i'll just I guess point out some of the things I was talking about so up in the right hand corner, is what the virtual presentation.
Mackenzie Ross: looks like that we complete a scientist and every Florida school scientists and then, when I was talking about stuffs by the numbers, that is, the lower left hand corner.
Mackenzie Ross: And then the middle lower graphic is the different counties that we completed that we currently complete SAS visits end.
Mackenzie Ross: Oh awesome Okay, so you guys open the press the poster um so I guess I could take questions now.
Mackenzie Ross: If we have any questions.
Patricia Kelley: I have a question if nobody else does, I was wondering how scientists are matched with classrooms is there any overarching structure that determines who goes where.
Mackenzie Ross: yeah so we have two people that actually run that the names are Brian stuffy.
Mackenzie Ross: And they are reshapes the scientists like I said we've over 350 scientists and they run on from you know geologist paleontologist like myself, all the way to like file EG botanist and such.
Mackenzie Ross: And they know, most of them personally, and if we need any new scientists they region there's a little bit of like a vetting process.
Mackenzie Ross: And they basically reach out to them and say hey we have this teacher they're looking to beat these certain Florida standards and.
Mackenzie Ross: If you think that you can reach these we will put you in touch with the scientists or this teacher and they put us in touch with them obviously via email and virtually nowadays.
Mackenzie Ross: And there's a certain email exchange that goes on, if we feel like it's not an appropriate fit.
Mackenzie Ross: Then it goes on, but usually nine times out of 10 it's always inappropriate there's it's very rare that that that fit wouldn't happen.
Mackenzie Ross: But it's usually the the teacher will fill out there's an online form that they fill out requesting a scientist and then Brian and stephanie then maps that teacher with the scientist based on those the standards that that teachers looking to me.
Patricia Kelley: Very good.
Patricia Kelley: Do you find is it mostly graduate students who who do this or what's the proportion of undergrads grants and faculty that are involved.
Mackenzie Ross: um so I myself actually started as an undergraduate I completed maybe 10 to 15.
Mackenzie Ross: Visits myself as an undergraduate and working on two professional development workshops was an undergraduate before I started Grad school.
Mackenzie Ross: um, but I would say the majority are probably graduate to PhD students that are currently volunteering.
Mackenzie Ross: But we do have a fair amount of professional and faculty scientists that do it as well, but i'd say the majority is probably graduate students they're probably the most the most outreach minded at the current moment.
Mackenzie Ross: that's awesome thank y'all.
Patricia Kelley: Okay i'm.
Patricia Kelley: gonna go ahead and introduce the next speaker in case we have any issues pulling things up.
Patricia Kelley: So, Michael gibson is going to be our next speaker he's talking about the Tennessee CIO conclave a novel opportunity to for program self evaluation.
Patricia Kelley: and Michael are you here.
Michael A Gibson: I am, I did not do a recording I didn't realize, I was supposed to go ahead of time, so if you don't, mind you can and mute my video part or my my image and if they've got the poster up i'll walk through it for about three four minutes and then i'll take the questions.
Patricia Kelley: So renee you could.
Patricia Kelley: yeah you can love to post all right.
perfect.
Michael A Gibson: Glenn start i'm good.
Patricia Kelley: yeah I think so yeah.
Michael A Gibson: um well good morning everybody i'm what i'm going to share with you today it's a teeny bit different it's not so much what we did during covert or or novel.
Michael A Gibson: classroom related things, this is a bit more about how we might use, something we do in Tennessee to assess our programs on a larger scale in Tennessee about 1980.
Michael A Gibson: We instituted what's called the geo conclave, and this is an opportunity where a lot of ours, our schools in Tennessee and the surrounding states.
Michael A Gibson: meet up here in Tennessee for a field trip, and then we get together for competitions between our our students and our programs.
Michael A Gibson: And you can see, the third column of the poster there we've got these divvied up into technical events which would be your typical.
Michael A Gibson: Fossil mineral rock ID geologic map interpretation type things the things that we would all say we're probably in the core of what we teach our our geoscience students.
Michael A Gibson: In the afternoon it's mostly about having a lot of fun, and so we have skill based.
Michael A Gibson: competitions that involve who can throw a rock hammer the furthest who can be the most accurate, who wrote a role, a perfect God role for distance or accuracy and.
Michael A Gibson: Some other things we have some optional challenges that are in there just to have a lot of fun, but the academic culminating event is that evening, where we have a.
Michael A Gibson: Round Robin trade off of four person per team rock bowl, and these were patterned after the old college ball back in the 1960s, where you.
Michael A Gibson: You have toss up questions that related to the geosciences and you get that you get to move on to a bonus, and then we just basically compete each other down to late at night.
Michael A Gibson: When, finally, there is a final winner of both the rock bowl and then, when we add all these things that are scored up, we end up with a a.
Michael A Gibson: winner for the entire competition and we can have anywhere from four to six or eight schools that participate and we've, this is the longest running event like this and southeast that we're aware aware of.
Michael A Gibson: While that has been great for our students, we also realize that for a lot of our programs, it gives us a rather unique way to.
Michael A Gibson: assess our programs outside the normal avenues all our programs go through southern accreditation approval, so of course every few years sax sax programs where you bring in somebody from your peer institutions and they evaluate your program and then you.
Michael A Gibson: Are scored based upon these visitations, and these are designed to be very formal they're designed to be rather uniform so that everybody's being.
Michael A Gibson: evaluated on the same types of things to choose from quality programming, but what we do as a conclave is we are mixing everything from private through our one institutions at the same event.
Michael A Gibson: We get to see our students literally performing at various stages throughout their program and how our individual courses in the train we give our students might.
Michael A Gibson: Compare up not only to our peers, but also to our feeder schools, so, for example, i'm at ut Martin, we do not have graduate Program.
Michael A Gibson: But we feed up undergraduate programs So are we lay the right foundation for our students and then move up so it's it's a different way to use the same type of gathering the gatherings they become very, very.
Michael A Gibson: Well, sought and attended like say we could have we have six or seven schools case with these things.
Michael A Gibson: And we compare all sorts of things about our program and our training and technology and and we could get track our students, they leave our institutions will go up to say ut na solar memphis as they work their way up until some of these are ones, so we would just like to offer.
Michael A Gibson: A the opportunity to for y'all to understand that you might be able to create something like this in your state.
Michael A Gibson: With the schools in your area or, better, yet we would like to invite you to come up to our Tennessee want to participate in it and cheer.
Michael A Gibson: For a couple of days we'd be happy to expand the number of days on it and, again, not only do you do your students enjoy it and get to do a little networking, but at the same time, you get valuable information about.
Michael A Gibson: Your program and how will you performing and what others might be doing and how to network your feeder programs directly into the graduate programs so with that i'll stop explaining and be more than happy to take whatever questions.
Patricia Kelley: We do have about five minutes for questions and discussion so.
Patricia Kelley: Have you implemented any changes as a result of this, you know this this assessment that you're doing I remember Sachs always was big on closing the loop and implementing changes.
Michael A Gibson: We have I, and I pose that question to a lot of my institutions that are a member of the group and.
Michael A Gibson: it's a couple things in there some schools realize that content area, for example, of some of the courses has shifted through time for example i'm being in paleontologist photography there used to be a pretty hefty end emphasis on.
Michael A Gibson: Learning all the the the strata graphic ranges of all the index file souls, and things of this nature, and of course most programs have moved pretty far away from that.
Michael A Gibson: and not every program moved, at the same time right there, there were programs that lag behind and updating and so I think.
Michael A Gibson: That was one place, we saw a lot of same concept there used to be a lot of emphasis, for example on how many glacial names can you learn as a freshman or in an intro class and we've also learned that now, while that you do need that to be able to communicate.
Michael A Gibson: That may not be the most important thing if you follow modern pedagogy.
Michael A Gibson: and learning theory and the I think that's probably been one of the best things we've seen a lot of schools have gone back and try something, and the next year we get back together and we find out whether that worked in their area or not.
Michael A Gibson: There are activities that we've changed because East Tennessee is very hard rock oriented, for example, and very structurally deformed.
Michael A Gibson: i'm in West Tennessee so all sediment and pretty flat line, so the types of things you would do in training field skills, for example, vary from one part of the State to the next, so I know we have and.
Michael A Gibson: Some folks at Tennessee tech pointed out that.
Michael A Gibson: When it came to mineralogy that they would win that competition 20 years straight nobody could beat him on it, so what they learned was no we don't need change the thing we don't need, we do not need to move to the next.
Michael A Gibson: pedagogical technique that came through because they were actually doing quite fine with that, as it was in there, so the answer is yes, it is fight back well.
Patricia Kelley: Other questions.
Tyler Smith: I do have a question was there any as a participant in past GEO conclaves of middle Tennessee.
Tyler Smith: wondered if there was any attempt to.
Tyler Smith: To hold, I know that a lot of the outdoor you know, obviously competitions can be done, but was there any attempt to do like the geo bowl virtually this year.
Michael A Gibson: um no there wasn't we didn't do we, this is the first year i'm actually the first two years to row because they've bought we've actually technically already canceled it for for fall and the reason we had to do, that is, you have to start advance now, we talked about it a lot.
Michael A Gibson: But this is, this is one of those things that was clearly not going to be covered, friendly and we just didn't see any way to really do the first round of competitions and but there was very little discussion.
Michael A Gibson: About just doing the rock ball that way, but in retrospect we probably should have gone that route and that's still a possibility for fall, I suppose.
Michael A Gibson: Not for obviously the previous round in here the logistics behind reserving the the park service camps at sites and so forth we're we're just a bit large at that point.
Patricia Kelley: If you hold it elsewhere, I noticed that it's almost always been been up this particular park.
Patricia Kelley: Right that's.
Patricia Kelley: All just like a.
Michael A Gibson: Is a premier park in Tennessee and it's always been there, except for one time back in the early 90s, it was that big rich in East Tennessee only because.
Michael A Gibson: We were late in schedule usually the park service would give us this big area before they open up the campgrounds for the public.
Michael A Gibson: has been the arrangement, and the same thing happen just couple years back, so we had to find another spot.
Michael A Gibson: And then, so we moved down to southeast Tennessee this time to start chatting and again try it a bit, but it'll be back and forth back forth because that's been the the home institution of a park service institution for it, since the inception.
gotcha.
Patricia Kelley: Okay, thank you very much, Michael.
Patricia Kelley: looks like we're about about time to move on to our next presentation, which is by Stephen king.
Patricia Kelley: Co author Joseph Allen and the talk is entitled 10 plus years of undergraduate EP ma for teaching and research, history and impact and renee can you know.
Stephen Kuehn: i'm prepared to share screen here on my end.
Patricia Kelley: that's all right okay that sounds good.
Stephen Kuehn: All right, before I do that just make a note that i'm actually presenting this from the lab which doubles as my office so it's like the instruments actually there in the background interesting co create.
Stephen Kuehn: In.
Stephen Kuehn: Equal screen share.
Stephen Kuehn: Can you see the poster.
Patricia Kelley: Yes.
Stephen Kuehn: So my poster relates to some highlights of a more than 10 year adventure in building and running an electron microscope or em a lab.
Stephen Kuehn: That is focused primarily on undergraduate student research and for me personally it's been a very special opportunity really unique kind of opportunity in a in a Labor of love really.
Stephen Kuehn: I should say that concord is a small rural primarily undergraduate university located in.
Stephen Kuehn: Southern West Virginia and early on, when we get this started, we joke that we probably have the only electron micro probe.
Stephen Kuehn: located in a little university town halls only one traffic signal, so it gives you a sense of the scale or.
Stephen Kuehn: The story really begins about 10 years ago a little more than 10 years ago my co author Joe Allen was offered a used electron micro pro by the University of Kentucky and he had the foresight and the vision to say yes.
Stephen Kuehn: So.
Stephen Kuehn: Of course, any lab and instrument needs someone with the appropriate expertise to run it.
Stephen Kuehn: And so i've interviewed for that position in spring of 2010 and I had the opportunity at that time to see the lab or the potential and at that point, there were pieces of equipment and piles of cables scattered all over the room nothing that even been put together.
Stephen Kuehn: And for a moment I thought, what am I getting myself into I had some momentary doubts that this would even work, but it was clear that Joe and I shared some similar ideas on what this lab could become first rate ecpm a log focused on undergraduates.
Stephen Kuehn: And as further context, I could kind of tense it already, this has been a very unconventional endeavor nearly all EPA labs are located, either at research one universities or government facilities.
Stephen Kuehn: And that first year I tracked down every EPA my lab I could locate in North America, and there was only one at an undergrad institution, and it was our lab.
Stephen Kuehn: Earlier, when Joe was putting together an internal proposal to start the lab he sought out literature indicating previous successes with refurbishing similar older equipment for use in.
Stephen Kuehn: undergraduate courses and research things about like How was it done what happened afterwards, but he didn't have a lot of luck finding things.
Stephen Kuehn: But 10 years later we're now in the position to be able to provide such an example.
Stephen Kuehn: Similarly, during the second year of the labs existence, when there was still quite a bit of development underway, I attended a Council on undergraduate research occurring in DC.
Stephen Kuehn: And as part of that I participated in a National Science Foundation visit day since I was in the middle of building this lab I.
Stephen Kuehn: asked to meet with a couple of program officers to talk about advice it's like well what what could I do to potentially be in a position to put in proposals for instrument upgrades down road and they asked me a question.
Stephen Kuehn: Why would I be trying to run an EPA my lab in the undergrad school wouldn't it just be more cost effective to pay for time on an instrument at some other university because that's what people usually do.
Stephen Kuehn: and honestly, then I really had no good answer, but now, after having done this for a while I do have, and this poster covers some of those reasons, the kinds of impacts that this endeavor is made possible that otherwise would not be feasible you don't put you know hundreds of.
Stephen Kuehn: Students into Vance and drive them hours away to use any pma.
Stephen Kuehn: So one of the key things this is enabled is that it makes undergraduates the primary users and that in and of itself is quite unusual.
Stephen Kuehn: And, in fact, the vast majority of the analytical work completed in the lab has been done by undergrads and having the lab on site means that we can also fit that work in between student class and work schedules.
Stephen Kuehn: So on the poster here there's this there's a section in the lower left.
Stephen Kuehn: That summarizes some of the impacts and there's another in the lower right that highlight some of the history of the lab as we've built and developed and improved things over time.
Stephen Kuehn: And there's some other things in here on some of the examples of how we've been using the lab so maybe I should start with.
Stephen Kuehn: Here in the middle, or a couple of photos you can see how things are set up this, this is an instrument from.
Stephen Kuehn: Well, I have, I have one of their sales brochures from 1978 so this tells you when this thing was originally designed, but we, we have modern computer control this thing's running off a windows 10.
Stephen Kuehn: And so it's come a long way and so there's an example here.
Stephen Kuehn: intro geology lab on the instrument, and this is general education and primarily non majors course and we bring them in routinely every semester, to use a little bit of micro analytical chemistry and imaging for dealing with minerals and rocks.
Stephen Kuehn: And we also bring in chemistry lab.
Stephen Kuehn: So intro chemistry mostly they'll look at just a few eds spectra and the one here and Center the screen and lower and there they can look at.
Stephen Kuehn: How X Ray spectroscopy can inform us about the electrons structure of atoms particularly core electrons and energy levels.
Stephen Kuehn: And it also supports research and mineralogy metrology structural geology and micro analytical methods course and others and there's also frequently independent.
Stephen Kuehn: Student research and student faculty collaborative research in the lab those research projects, most of them focus on a couple of things, one of the major ones is volcanic ash with applications and vulcanology and in Paleo environmental studies and there's a.
Stephen Kuehn: backscatter electronic music, with some ash particles and a piece of a core.
Stephen Kuehn: With some I think that one might be for medicine like focusing on California.
Stephen Kuehn: And we also do a lot with fractional melts so deep earthquakes and so we have there's a sample holder here with a couple of things sections on it, those are.
Stephen Kuehn: Our pseudo tackling or fractional melts and I have another closer view slide here now in the lower right in the screen and students come in and do X Ray mapping and point analyses and whatnot.
Stephen Kuehn: We also support a network of researchers from about 20 institutions, which is an in related impacts box, most of these are other universities, but there are some consulting firms and whatnot mostly good sentence a volcanic ash samples for identification.
Stephen Kuehn: And there's a couple other uses mentioned on here, I have one here now in the middle.
Stephen Kuehn: This is an x Ray map of the glaze on some pottery so we actually could put in art objects and this particular one.
Stephen Kuehn: was kind of interesting because it turns out well, if you think about what the glazes on on pottery is made most of its ground up minerals well you put that in the kiln to melt it.
Stephen Kuehn: You have.
Stephen Kuehn: melted ground up minerals that's basically like experimental lava and and these things grow like little crystal sometimes it looks a lot like like.
Stephen Kuehn: Doing experimental ology, but these are objects.
Stephen Kuehn: Other highlights should mention, so we have.
Stephen Kuehn: A an nsf funded study on embedding research and a sequence of core courses and their spend some some of that's been reported out papers are are cited here.
Stephen Kuehn: And one of the things we found through assessment of that project is that the students responded very positively to the use of lab equipment and analytical instruments.
Stephen Kuehn: And they actually the data indicates that a real student preference for having those kinds of opportunities as they see it as a part of their workforce preparation.
Stephen Kuehn: One of our newest endeavors is a research experience for undergraduates Arctic RU Greenland this mentioning here are the grant proposals and the first cohort of students from that are going to be on the instrument this summer.
Stephen Kuehn: Regarding transfer ability of some of these things a fair bit of what we do like with the.
Stephen Kuehn: intro geology lab, for example, really doesn't need a full on micro probe and SEM with a good eds detector would work fine.
Stephen Kuehn: Other things like the volcanic ash fingerprinting really do benefit from the greater analytical position of any pma.
Stephen Kuehn: And when we get into trace element analysis that's where it really becomes essential.
Stephen Kuehn: And we've started thinking about some next steps with the way the pandemic has got everybody used to things like zoom and remote learning tools.
Stephen Kuehn: we've been thinking about maybe being able to take this out to K through 12 students and with a little bit of prior setup and planning.
Stephen Kuehn: We maybe we'll even be able to have some of their own interesting samples, maybe like stream sediment out of the local creek put on and have them drive the instrument themselves remotely.
Stephen Kuehn: that's all I have be happy to entertain questions.
Patricia Kelley: I don't think we have time for questions I don't know whether they'll let leave us in our zoom room after our session ends or not, but I really enjoyed all these talks such a diversity of of topics such great work going on.
Patricia Kelley: we'll move to our final one looks like you've stopped sharing Stephen and so now we've got Larry Collins talking about.
Patricia Kelley: The work that he's been involved with in collaboration with folks at delta state and i'm getting hungry for lunch told me 10am where I am out in Seattle, but we're going to hear about jams and jellies.
Patricia Kelley: So Larry I you're going to play.
Renee Clary: And I am at Washington State University in Washington state.
Renee Clary: So much for joining me today i'm gonna go ahead and share with you some of the work that my colleagues that delta State University and I have been working on.
Renee Clary: jams and jellies from around the United States, we know in the United States in particular that we have seen several movements that have been put forward to transform the ways that we teach our undergraduate laboratories.
Renee Clary: One of those ways is to incorporate research experiences into the undergraduate laboratory for students to participate in that are aligned with their professors area of research.
Renee Clary: At delta state university students have had the opportunity to work with Dr writing and Dr Smith are to investigate a big question of how do jams, jellies and preserves correlates to the local geology in which the plants that they are essentially quote unquote extracted from.
Renee Clary: To what degree, are those actually related to one another, and so what we did in this in this particular course live activity.
Renee Clary: Over the course of the Semester and environmental chemistry and environmental science methods and materials is We actually had students use ash samples from across the United States and even cooler one from the UK.
Renee Clary: We have them take each of those samples, and we have them actually prepare them for analysis to figure out what is the chemistry of that particular sample what elements pop up in it and how can we use those elements to correlate.
Renee Clary: The with the elements in the jam or jelly to preserve with the local geology So what we actually have the students do first and you'll see a map down in the bottom left.
Renee Clary: That represents the various sites of where we actually have Jim samples from and this map continues to grow every year.
Renee Clary: And so what we ask students to do is we take about two to three weeks and we prepare the samples for analysis.
Renee Clary: And this requires basically taking the sample putting them on a hot plate, putting them into crucibles getting raised and put them into an oven, because we want to take that gem sample and make it into an ash.
Renee Clary: So, then we can use that as a sample and vials and store them in violence use those ash samples to take pictures of it on scanning electron microscope.
Renee Clary: After they take pictures of it on a scanning electron microscope We then want to be able to take each of those samples and determine the chemistry of those samples.
Renee Clary: What elements are actually inside of each of those samples and how and to what degree do those elements inside the gym sample correlate with the soil samples that are inside of the of the soil and which that the area in which the sample was taken from or grown in.
Renee Clary: We noticed some very interesting result, our students determine that.
Renee Clary: samples local to the Mississippi delta required or basically didn't require but they had in them several different for a variety of elements, such as the musk and i'm sample that was perhaps or that was.
Renee Clary: obtained from Mississippi the Blackberry sample from Mississippi both of those kind of wide diversity of elements and you can see in the top chart on the right.
Renee Clary: And also another one that's interesting is the peach Idaho sample actually had some nickel and it.
Renee Clary: Along with the sample from Laurel Virginia both of those were own areas where there was a lot of mining that took place, so we think that maybe the Nicole was as a result of that.
Renee Clary: You can also see them calcium spice and some of the samples, and maybe some of the calcium fights are due to the line me soil soil that are present in that area.
Renee Clary: All know our students were able to gain an understanding my participating in this in this research experience about.
Renee Clary: set of skills that are pretty central and science, like collaboration like presenting scientific data, because our students, and this is how we think our course.
Renee Clary: One measure of our courses been successful their laboratory experiences, because our students have been able to produce several peer reviews conference presentations.
Renee Clary: and publications that offer new knowledge to the scientific community.
Renee Clary: And the the new science and acknowledge that our students are contributing in also a broader relevance to the fields of soil chemistry as well, and at this time, thank you so much for attending today and i'll take any questions.
Larry Collins: Right well Thank you so much for sharing that renee I will also add folks that delta State University is a primarily four year institution, and it is located in a rural area of Mississippi and we do serve a lot of.
Larry Collins: underrepresented students in this area so many of them are doing research for the first time.
Patricia Kelley: Larry I think this was a great project, I was wondering how the samples were acquired and if you could use this project for for place based education if students could bring samples from their local area.
Patricia Kelley: Is that possible or is normally you provide the samples.
Larry Collins: Oh that's absolutely possible Patricia I know we historically in the past have not had the students bring in samples themselves.
Larry Collins: chuck chuck nine and myself have shared samples for the students in those classes to use and prepare themselves but i'm from a place space perspective.
Larry Collins: I think that one thing that would be valuable for that too is, I think that it would also.
Larry Collins: Potentially give the students, an opportunity to evaluate soil samples that are local to them, and maybe make the science a bit more meaningful to them if they could connect it with their local area, so I like that suggestion i'm going to reflect that to or take that back to my colleagues.
Renee Clary: did your sample.
Renee Clary: The dance and jellies.
The differences.
Larry Collins: Oh, I will say it might be tempting and we probably and I will say that we did do that, but from like a taste perspective I don't know that that was quite the way we determine some of the elements or differences but um but but yeah that's, we should think about that more in the future.
Patricia Kelley: Other questions.
Patricia Kelley: I think they're going to shut us down soon okay two minutes.
Patricia Kelley: Well, thanks everybody for being patient with us your your coke and Venus had challenges to meet in in the sharing of screens on the downloading of videos and that sort of thing.
Patricia Kelley: But as I said, I feel like we're all among friends and i'm really sorry that we can't be there in person, together, but thank you very much for being here, everyone and for all the presenters who contributed, this has been a great session.
Renee Clary: Thank you so much, I really enjoyed this and i'm so happy you all may time in your very busy schedules to attend.
rkvance: refreshing.
Renee Clary: i'm not sure what happens with the.