Collaborative Project: EarthCube Education End-User Workshop

Education Development Center, Waltham MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award is being used to convene a workshop of ~40 participants to define end-user needs related to geoscience education within the EarthCube initiative. The workshop brings together disciplinary faculty in the geosciences, educators experienced in teaching with geoscience data and developing associated curricula, representatives of NSF-sponsored research programs involved with generation of large data sets, as well as technologists, STEM education researchers, and learning scientists. The workshop is being held at the Scripps Forum (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) during the Spring of 2013. The workshop seeks to explore both the educational opportunities offered through the cyberinfrastructure capabilities of the EarthCube program and identify the educational needs for preparing undergraduate students and faculty to be the future contributors to the scientific research enabled by EarthCube. A major goal of this workshop is to establish an initial roadmap for educational activities that should be associated with or enabled by EarthCube. The workshop will consider the educational and instructional strategies not only to prepare students in undergraduate programs to be technologically-savvy users of EarthCube data and models, but also to build the future scientific capacity to advance Earth systems scientific research. Consideration will also be given to how EarthCube may serve as a platform for advancing STEM education research.