Getting Help from Course Management Software to Teach a Large-enrollment Introductory Geology Class

This article deals with utilizing the Internet as a medium for empowering learning and course management of on-campus classes using the enterprise-wide software system WebCT, which has proven to be very useful in managing a large introductory geology class. The author presents the results of her students' learning experience with WebCT. The article also provides a simple tutorial on how to create an Internet-enhanced course in less than a day using WebCT and with no prior knowledge of HTML language or FTP procedures. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Research on Students\u27 Conceptual Understanding of Environmental, Oceanic, Atmospheric, and Climate Science Content

At the interface between atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere, this theme chapter covers content that is societally crucial but publicly controversial and fraught by misconceptions and misinformation. Climate science is an interdisciplinary field that straddles the natural and social sciences; understanding its processes requires system-thinking, understanding mathematical models, and appreciation of its human and societal components. Recent data show that extreme weather and climate events have become more frequent in the past decades. These include extreme temperatures, floods, like the ones associated with the series of very powerful hurricanes that made an unprecedented number of landfalls in August and September 2017 and unusual drought conditions and forest fires across the Western US in the summer of 2017. Studies like these emphasize the complexity of climate science and highlight the importance of climate change adaptation. However, there is a significant disparity in the distribution of vulnerability and readiness to impacts of climate change around the world. In this theme chapter, authors have identified five grand challenges to the conceptual understanding of environmental, oceanic, atmospheric and climate science, and proposed strategies for the geoscience education research community