Course Redesign ePortfolio Showcase

We hooked students into the content of our new introductory geology course using popular Hollywood movies, but we went beyond those movies so that students could recognize the ways in which the media lens distorted the nature of science. We started with a simple topic (dinosaurs) and slowly moved into much more controversial areas (such as water resources and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas). The mixture of science concepts, media, and policy allowed us to have students engage in thought provoking discussions. To succeed with that discussion in a fully online lecture and lab format, we engaged lots of humanizing structures such as team-based data collection using online tools, role-playing within teams, progressively revealed case studies, and discussions using VoiceThread and Moodle forums. In the end, our students felt like they got more human interaction and feedback in our fully online course than they do in typical face-to-face GE courses.

In previous years, the Introduction to Geographic Information Systems course focused primarily on learning proprietary software, rather than analysis, communication, and project management. Introduction to Geographic Information systems served as a pre-requisite for subsequent GIS courses. However, there was an absence of any direct learning progression related to concepts, methods, and skill sets between courses. The Geospatial Curriculum at Humboldt State University has undergone a broad scale revision in order to reduce redundant content and to prepare our students for the modern geospatial workforce. This course re-design is a reflection of those revisions, intended to provide a consistent learning progression between the lower division Geospatial Concepts course, and the upper division Intermediate GIS course.

Cartography is a discipline with a long history which has undergone significant changes with advances in technology. Students learn the core principles of cartography and visual communication, and must also keep up with a constantly evolving suite of software. The demand for this course is high, and this skill set enhances a variety of other disciplines. The purpose of this redesign is to take a very traditional, hands-on course and successfully convert it to a fully online format.

his project seeks to improve the level of student performance through implementing elements of flipped classroom techniques. Through the production and dissemination of online tutorials, students will engage in training tutorials and course content prior to attending lab and lecture/discussion sessions thereby improving their basis for understanding material delivered during face-to-face meetings. Course concepts will be introduced to the students through various media, then reinforced in the classroom and lab environment. Current barriers to student success include difficulty in translating theoretical concepts discussed in class to physical layout and measurement exercises in lab. Further student readiness barriers include a lack of understanding of the underlying concepts of geometry and trigonometry pertinent to surveying and layout activities. Curricular and Pedagogical barriers to student success are mostly related to the necessary allocation of lecture and lab time to explaining the setup and use of the surveying equipment. Use of the equipment is absolutely critical to the success of the students in this course. Lecture and discussion sessions result in a physical layout exercise in the field during the weekly lab sessions. Lab activities simply cannot be performed without the appropriate equipment. Given the equipment-intensive nature of the lab, a significant amount of lab (and sometimes lecture) time is devoted to teaching students how to set-up and use the equipment. This often results in a scenario in which students spend much of the lab session focused on the "how" of setting up and using the equipment rather than focusing the "why" and developing an understanding of the practical application of the theories and principles discussed in lecture. This course redesign seeks to provide training and tutorial videos to the students in an online format. To ensure student participation and in order to provide instantaneous feedback, students will complete an online quiz after viewing the videos and prior to the related class. In-class time that would have otherwise been spent explaining the topics of the video will instead be used to hold a student-led review and/or discussion of the pertinent concepts of the video tutorial.

This is a GE course fulfilling the science with a lab requirement. The class is offered every semester, yet always has a waitlist, causing some students to be delayed in graduation. The redesign will incorporate technology and active learning strategies for better student engagement resulting in higher student success rates.

GEOS 101 is populated by non-STEM major students seeking to fulfill their GE Area B requirement. With sections that range in size from 65-200 students, the large number of students and lecture hall environment has made it challenging to adopt active learning strategies in the course. The goal of this work is to improve student learning and engagement through using small group active learning strategies. Tools to assist this work include student assistants to facilitate small groups, flipped classroom strategies to gain in-class time for active learning, and iClickers to improve formative assessment.