Experiential Discoveries in Geoscience Education (EDGE)

University Of Alaska Southeast Juneau Campus, Juneau AK

Investigators

Abstract

Experiential Discoveries in Geoscience Education (EDGE) University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) Juneau Campus Project EDGE is addressing the need for Alaska's teachers to gain skills and knowledge in designing engaging learning environments that target state Earth science content and performance standards and meet the educational needs of a diverse student population. The project is using Alaska's changing landscape as an outdoor laboratory for introducing fifteen 6-12th grade teachers and their students to the scientific methods used to observe ongoing adjustments of glacial, fluvial, and coastal systems to climate change. Teachers are creating their own geoscience hypotheses that will be tested with their students back in the classroom. EDGE university faculty will begin tracking and evaluating participant teachers and students to assess the effectiveness of this project as a means of achieving a ten-year goal of increased enrollment in UAS Environmental Science and University of Alaska Fairbanks Geoscience Departments. The EDGE year of activities includes a two-week UAS Earth Systems Science Field Methods and GIS course that puts 15 teachers into outdoor environments with university faculty. Teachers learn to observe Earth processes and devise testable hypotheses about how change is occurring. Teachers collect appropriate GPS data for a project they design and develop an understanding of GIS concepts as they use their spatial data in the production of project maps. Late in the summer, middle and high-school students receive university credit by participating in one week of UAS courses in GPS and GIS. As students and teachers return to their communities and science classrooms, they carry out student geoscience projects that focus on local, observable geologic processes. Utilizing long-term community observations, students are adding time sequence observations to their project. During the fall semester, teachers are simultaneously enrolled in a 15-week UAS web-based distance course in Earth System Science Essentials so that they can receive additional geologic content that they in turn can disseminate to their students. University faculty guide teachers and students through the GIS projects. The EDGE project maintains and loans GPS receivers and laptop computers loaded with Arcview 3.x GIS software to teachers and classrooms throughout the region.