Integrate Professional Preparation Into Your Program

On this page from the SAGE 2YC project, Carol Ormand has compiled a number of useful presentations and reading materials on integrating professional preparation into a GIS program. As the website states: "Preparing your students for their future careers isn't something you do just once...it's an integral part of their education." The examples provided here will no doubt inspire instructors to create new ways of preparing students to enter the workforce

Understand Geoscience Employment Trends

This page from the SAGE 2YC project provides a list of links to articles, webinars, data and other information on recent geoscience employment trends which will be very useful for GIS faculty and students. The page is divided into several sections: Future Geoscience Workforce Needs, Resources and Geoscience Employment Data

Know What Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities Employers are Looking For

On this page from the SAGE 2YC project, Carol Ormand has compiled a number of useful resources on preparing students for their careers by bolstering their knowledge, skills and abilities. The page includes employer and employee perspectives, AGI career webinars, profiles of geoscientists and references. These resources would be helpful for students looking to gain a better idea of how they can improve their own skills in order to become more marketable in today's workforce

The Lay of the Land: Sensing and Representing Topography

Navigating, and studying spatial navigation, is difficult enough in two dimensions when maps and terrains are flat. Here we consider the capacity for human spatial navigation on sloped terrains, and how sloping terrain is depicted in 2D map representations, called topographic maps. First, we discuss research on how simple slopes are encoded and used for reorientation, and to learn spatial configurations. Next, we describe how slope is represented in topographic maps, and present an assessment (the Topographic Map Assessment), which can be administered to measure topographic map comprehension. Finally, we describe several approaches our lab has taken with the aim of improving topographic map comprehension, including gesture and analogy. The current research reveals a rich and complex picture of topographic map understanding, which likely involves perceptual expertise, strong spatial skills, and inferential logic

The Lay of the Land: Sensing and Representing Topography

Navigating, and studying spatial navigation, is difficult enough in two dimensions when maps and terrains are flat. Here we consider the capacity for human spatial navigation on sloped terrains, and how sloping terrain is depicted in 2D map representations, called topographic maps. First, we discuss research on how simple slopes are encoded and used for reorientation, and to learn spatial configurations. Next, we describe how slope is represented in topographic maps, and present an assessment (the Topographic Map Assessment), which can be administered to measure topographic map comprehension. Finally, we describe several approaches our lab has taken with the aim of improving topographic map comprehension, including gesture and analogy. The current research reveals a rich and complex picture of topographic map understanding, which likely involves perceptual expertise, strong spatial skills, and inferential logic

The spatial thinking workbook: A research-validated spatial skills curriculum for geology majors

© Nat. Assoc. Geosci. Teachers. Spatial visualization is an essential prerequisite for understanding geological features at all scales, such as the atomic structures of minerals, the geometry of a complex fault system, or the architecture of sedimentary deposits. Undergraduate geoscience majors bring a range of spatial skill levels to upper-level courses. Fortunately, spatial thinking improves with practice, and students benefit from intentional training. Several promising teaching strategies have emerged from recent cognitive science research into spatial thinking: gesturing, predictive sketching, and comparison, including analogy and alignment. Geoscience educators have traditionally incorporated many of these tools in their teaching, though not always consciously, intentionally, and in the most effective ways. Our research team, composed of geoscientists and cognitive psychologists, has collaborated to develop curricular materials for mineralogy, structural geology, and sedimentology and stratigraphy courses that incorporate these strategies intentionally and purposefully, supporting student understanding of the spatially challenging concepts and skills in these courses. Collectively, these two dozen learning activities comprise the Spatial Thinking Workbook (http://serc.carleton.edu/spatialworkbook/index.html). Pre- to posttest gains on a suite of assessment instruments, as well as embedded assessments, show that these curricular materials boost students’ spatial thinking skills and strengthen their ability to solve geological problems with a spatial component

Accelerating change: The power of faculty change agents to promote diversity and inclusive teaching practices

Faculty play an important role in attracting students to the geosciences, helping them to thrive in geoscience programs, and preparing them for careers. Thus, faculty have the responsibility to work toward broadening participation in the geosciences by implementing equitable and inclusive practices in their teaching and their programs. Faculty professional development that promotes diversity and inclusion is one way to move evidence-based practices into wider use. The adoption of these practices may be accelerated through a professional development diffusion model that amplifies the impacts through the work of faculty change agents. An example of this approach is the SAGE 2YC professional development program, in which faculty change agents learn and practice strategies during workshop sessions, implement changes in their own teaching, and then work in teams to lead workshops in their region under the auspices of the national program. Although this example focuses on two-year colleges, the model is applicable to faculty professional development more broadly. The success of the model is due in large part to a suite of leader-developed workshop sessions and curated resources that change agent teams may select and adapt for the regional workshops they lead. Furthermore, change agents are trusted colleagues, which makes adoption of the evidence-based practices by regional workshop participants more likely. Increased adoption of a change agent approach to faculty development will support the creation and sharing of additional resources, leading to wider diffusion and implementation of inclusive teaching practices