We spend the first of three lab periods walking up a bedload-dominated stream bed that is a tributary stream to the Mohawk River. We notice the obvious flights of terraces along the stream. I ask the student to count them and walk up on them and think about how they came to be. We then think about how we might survey them, and document their presence. The students have a good idea what we're up to as we have stadia rods and abney levels. Then we go through the routine of measuring terrace heights using the modern stream as a datum. I then divide students into 3 teams and assign each team a different reach of the creek. In total we cover about 1 km., and teams are responsible for measuring the height of stream terraces above the modern stream and measuring with a tape measure their distance upstream from our starting point. On the second week we repeat this exercise on another stream, and then I compile all students data into an Excel spread sheet and ask them to do some simple calculations and plot longitudinal profiles of the modern streams, with terrace remnants plotted above the modern. They do this for both sides of each stream. They also plot a cross section of the stream valley at one point of their choosing to illustrate whether the terraces are paired or unpaired. On the final week, we tour the eastern Mohawk valley looking at much larger terraces that were produced by incision of the Mohawk, and we go to an outcrop of varves deposited in Glacial Lake Albany that crop out at the base of one of the terraces. The students thus get a sense of the large changes in base level that must have affected all the tributary streams in the region.
Has minimal/no quantitative component
Addresses student fear of quantitative aspect and/or inadequate quantitative skills

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In this assignment students read and discuss a peer-reviewed journal article and prepare for and attend our class 'research' conference. In the conference they present on an area of current research as discussed in the journal article they read, and they practice formulating questions about other's research.

Outcomes:
1. Read and discuss a structural geology peer-reviewed journal article.
2. Prepare a presentation that demonstrates your understanding of a current research topic in structural geology.
3. View and understand several diverse areas within geology and geophysics that use structural geology in research.
4. Ask questions relevant to a research presentation.

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This activity was inspired by the "Pet Rock" project of Daryl Henry. I developed this activity to be a capstone experience for our students. During the fall 4th year field trip, students are responsible for leading their field stop/project, and for collecting samples and measurements while at their stop. Students then analyze their samples/measurements as their term projects in the fall course. In the winter course the class compiles these field trip projects into their classes' field guide. Key Words: Field guide, tectonics, capstone

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A semester-long audio recording project, defined by the needs of a community organization, engages students in not only learning new content but sharing their new knowledge beyond classroom walls (and beyond the professor). This assignment, focusing on "engaged digital scholarship," challenges students to increase their information literacy and use of audio to effectively communicate scientific information for a general audience. This project has been embedded in several different introductory-level Earth science courses for non-science majors, with the resulting podcasts being shared with varied community groups. The example presented here focuses on students in a "Water: Science and Society" course generating podcasts that respond to specific content questions posed by Pennsylvania K-12 teachers, with the resulting podcasts posted on the website for the Pennsylvania Earth Science Teachers Association (PAESTA).

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To build and improve upon their science and information literacies, students create a collection of short non-fiction stories that connect to at least one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For this assignment, the stories were then posted online for middle and high school teachers to use in their classrooms.

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Assignment #1 Student-led discussion of articles from the literature
We assign one or two groups of two or three students to each of four or four or five topics related to climate change, and provide each group a set of related articles from the literature on their assigned topic. The group will lead a one-hour, in-class discussion on the topic, with up to a dozen students and one instructor in each discussion. In preparation for the discussion, the discussion co-leaders must collectively write a set of "Reading Questions" about each assigned article, which help readers focus on the key points made by the articles and can serve as points of discussion. The other students participating in the discussion must read the articles with the aid of these Reading Questions and annotate the portions of the articles that address the Reading Questions. We (instructors) evaluate the Reading Questions written by the co-leaders (they receive a shared grade for these), and we also check the annotated articles turned in by the other discussion participants to ensure that they prepared to participate in the discussion (they receive individual grades this). Discussion co-leaders each receive a grade for the quality of their discussion leadership.

The purpose of this assignment is in part to help students prepare for their final writing assignment by requiring that they read a set of articles closely enough to help other students discuss and understand the key points, and get feedback about their level of understanding, up to a month before the final paper on the topic is due. The immediate outcome that we expect from this assignment is a demonstration that students can read the assigned articles critically, identify and articulate the key points, and help engage other students in a discussion about the articles, including conceptually important or difficult aspects of them.
Assignment #2: Final writing assignment

For this assignment, which follows from the previous one, students are asked to:

locate two or more significant additional articles that relate closely to the articles on which they based the discussion that they co-led; and
write a 8-12 page (typed, double spaced) overview of the history and current state of our scientific understanding about the topic(s) covered by the set of discussion articles, based on the articles themselves plus relevant material presented in class or in assigned reading. In particular, wherever justified by the source material, students should try to include the following in the narrative:

initial observations/evidence;
initial hypotheses posed to account for initial observations/evidence (including external forcings and feedbacks);
subsequent observations/evidence that have confirmed or disproved earlier hypotheses;
technology that made making observations/gathering evidence possible and led to breakthroughs in understanding;
scientific controversies and how they played out historically or are currently playing out;
current understanding and remaining uncertainties.

The outcome should be a written demonstration of the student's ability to analyze and synthesize a set of articles from the literature and supporting materials provided in class to describe the history, current state, and unresolved aspects of our scientific understanding of an interdisciplinary aspect of climate change.

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To prepare for this lab activity, there are several preceding lectures on the basics of the hydrologic cycle, river systems, and sediment transport. We also introduce the watershed, including city maps of the land use in the area of the creek. Students read the relevant chapter in the textbook beforehand. Students collect the field data from the stream during the first week, and the second week focuses on teaching them to analyze the data, and to use spreadsheets to graph their results. A very detailed, formal report is handed in by each student at the culmination of the project.

The field experience requires students to collect and analyze data from four different stations along a local, impacted creek system. At each location students measure velocity and cross-sectional area, which they use to calculate the stream discharge. Students also collect data on the sediments by sieving and weighing samples, which they later use to generate cumulative sediment distribution curves. Water quality collected at each site includes total coliform, turbidity, nitrate concentrations, pH, dissolved oxygen, and temperature. Students are required to discuss all of these factors in their final report, and to assess whether the data are 'as expected' from the lectures and the reading. In addition, students develop and test their own hypothesis about the system. For example, they might choose to investigate whether sites with higher flow velocities correlate with higher sediment sizes.

This activity reinforces specific concepts about streamflow and sediment transport, and also illustrates how the field of geology contributes to our understanding of the interaction of humans and their environment.

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Project Description (Microsoft Word 14kB Jan26 10)
Water collection and usage in the Sustainable SW Japanese Garden

The Albuquerque Water Authority has several activities on their web site to help with making a personal water audit, selecting xeriscape plants, designing garden areas as well as forms for rebates. We used the ABQ Water Authority design format to calculate which plants to install. Students start with a personal water audit and then move to the design of the garden.
Personal water audit http://www.abcwua.org/Understanding_Your_Bill.aspx
Techniques to consevere water outdoors http://www.abcwua.org/Save_Water_Outdoors.aspx
Planning Xeriscape - students create their own personal garden and we transfer the concepts to the Japanese Garden. We are looking at Japanese design elements with a SW flare and thereby modeling what the internees did when they were limited to the surrounding rock, vegetation and water collection. http://www.abcwua.org/Xeriscaping.aspx

Calculating roof area using a Google satellite image

We use a measurable square on the pathway for the scale and then we calculate the square feet of the roof area. A transparency is used to overlay the image and calculate the water harvest.

Calculating the capacity of the 1500 gallon cistern in terms of water needed per plant

Students experiment with buckets to see ascertain the best collection site. The water is measured after rainfalls and compared to the weather data collected by the NOAA.

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The goal of this text is to provide a practical introduction to systems integration by designing and implementing an actual system. Readers are taken through a project that builds a containerized web application using Docker and then expands it to use the Kubernetes orchestration framework. Through the practical examples topics such as version control, interchange formats, front end design, messaging frameworks, container-based virtualization, and container orchestration are covered.

To prepare to view the TCE animation, students could view the 'A Civil Action' movie and the instructor could read to them excerpts from the trial testimony and images from Woburn, wells G and H, geologic materials, geologic cross sections, the trial participants, and the federal courtroom in Boston (available as a attachment to this activity and at a website listed below). The discussion in Bair (2001) about scientists in the courtroom, the specific (excerpted) testimony presented by the three expert witnesses in the 'A Civil Action' trial, a chart summarizing the differences in their testimony, and the views of a federal judge on the goal of science versus the goal of a civil trial may also be worthwhile reading by the class prior to the assignment.

The instructor could also show students the large plates included in the USGS report by Myette and others (1987) that display potentiometric data and contours before and after the famous aquifer test performed in December 1985 and January 1986, just before the trial, and discuss the ramifications of having only two sets of water-level measurements to characterize all the changes in the flow system between 1964 and 1979, when wells G and H periodically operated. This makes students consider the substantial differences in making predictions based on a steady-state conceptualization of the flow system or a transient conceptualization.

The instructor could also show the animation of induced infiltration from the Aberjona River to wells G and H that also was created by Martin van Oort (M.S., 2005) and based on the research of Maura Metheny (M.S., 1998; Ph.D., 2004) at Ohio State University. Viewing both animations enables students to see that the water produced by wells G and H is a highly transient mixture derived from many different source areas within the valley.

The article by Bair and Metheny (2002) concerning the remediation activities at the Wells G & H Superfund Site could be used to show how groundwater contamination is cleaned up, why different remediation schemes needed to be used in different hydrogeologic settings, and why cleanup to U.S. EPA standards can take decades.

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Over the course of the semester, the course covers many earth science topics that are easily observable on a casual but attentive walk through a natural area. Because the course does not have linked labs or field trips, this assignment attempts to get students to put their observation skills and content knowledge to the test by taking a hike and describing four Earth Science features or processes that they observe. These features and processes might include things like weather, streams, hillslope erosion, soil horizons, habitats or ecological succession.

When I introduce the assignment I spend 15 minutes discussing different places students might choose to take their hike. I make sure to highlight places near campus that can be reached without a car, as well as county parks that freshmen new to the area might not be aware of. Many students also choose to do the assignment on a weekend visit home to their parents and a favorite park or trail.

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Students are given a week to finish this take-home exam. The exam tests GIS concepts, solving GIS question using real research data,and building a model to map the cuddybear habitat. This activity gives students practice in GIS functions learned from previous lab and also requires students to think independently to solve real GIS questions.

The taphonomy project is a semester-long experiment the students design and run themselves, using the decomposition studies area run by the Criminal Justice department on campus. Following a discussion of taphonomic processes during the first week, the students come up with original questions to test. Working in pairs, they design the experiment, including methods, materials, sampling interval, and taphonomic evaluation. The students set up the experiment in week 3 and monitor it over the course of the semester. They will be required to keep an experimental journal, data from which they will upload to a wiki page. The students will be required to periodically evaluate and comment on other student's projects. The professor will also periodically evaluate the groups' progress periodically through the wiki. The end result is a 20-minute presentation in the style of an oral paper at a conference given the week before finals. This project develops the students' skills in experimental design, data analysis and written, oral and visual communication.

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This writing project of our Tectonics course is assigned at the start of the semester and due near the end. It is a group project that encourages creativity, cooperation, and synthesis of an entire curriculum's worth of concepts. Students create a tectonic history, with evidence, of a fictional world from a published map in a work of fiction.

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Ten brief descriptions are provided of cases in which there appear to be ethical issues in the practice of geology. Most are drawn from engineering geology, but no detailed prior knowledge of applied geology is necessary. The intent of these descriptions is to nucleate discussion about ethical decisions that must be made in the practice of geology.

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An online pedagogical reference grammar of the French language that combines authoritative grammar explanations, self-correcting exercises and online audio with surreal dialogues and cartoon images.

This lab introduces students to Thermal infrared Imagery and then asks them to evaluate which wavelengths (VIS, NIR, SWIR, or TIR) are the best choices to identify and discriminate between geologic materials. The lab focuses on the Geology in the Lake Mead Region east of Las Vegas, NV; the lab uses a Landsat image and a MASTER image of the area. Students get experience with a classic band combination using TIR to identify rock types and with making decisions on which wavelengths to use in identifying surface materials.

This is a computer lab where the students model the area to be mined, and estimate the amount of overburden that must be removed before the coal surface is exposed for mining.

Students make DEM-based observations and develop and test hypotheses regarding topographic differences between the two sides of the Colorado Sangre de Cristo Range.

One of the greatest areas of potential for open educational resources (OER) is the opportunity for improved representation and coverage of identities that often go erased or poorly addressed in educational materials. Information about, by, and for trans and gender diverse people is one such topic. With knowledge and intention, those involved in the creation, adaptation, and use of OER can find and incorporate materials that center trans and gender diverse people. Doing this is essential for supporting trans and gender diverse students and educating everyone about these identities. This resource is a guide on how to make OER more inclusive and representative of trans and gender diverse people. It is intended to be easily incorporated into a scholarly communications course, while also being valuable to faculty and others interested in learning about the topic and how to make changes to their own course materials.