This electronic peer review exercise has students discuss the major volcanic hazards and risks to humans.

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Students will explore reflection using hand mirrors and a laser pointer in this competitive activity.

When piecing together the geologic history of the Earth, geologists rely on several key relative age-dating principles that allow us to determine the relative ages of rocks and the timing of significant geologic events. In a typical Historical Geology class or textbook, instructors/authors briefly discuss the important early researchers in the geological sciences, and then give the name of the stratigraphic principle, useful for relative age-dating of rocks and events, that these 17th and 18th century scientists are credited with discovering. After the instructor/author defines these principles, students are usually shown several examples so they can see how the principle can be applied.

But why not start with the examples and let students discover these principles for themselves?

Students are split into small groups which each work to discover a different relative age-dating principle. The groups are shown photos and given handouts with drawings of rock outcrops illustrating the various principles. These handouts include worksheets for which they must answer a series of prompts that help lead them to the discovery of their relative age-dating principle. Groups must also invent a name for their principle, and select a spokesperson who will present the group's results to the rest of the class.

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Students brainstorm in groups about specific topics covered in an introductory course, and then work together as a class to discuss the relationships of those topics to each other.

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This is a large-scale participatory activity used to prompt students to review what they have learned and to think actively and cooperatively about the connections between the systems we have discussed prior to the activity. It produces a large, visual product students can reflect on.

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After covering the standard course material on area under a curve, Riemann sums and numerical integration, Calculus I students are given a write-pair-share activity that directs them to predict the best area approximation methods for each of several different functions. Afterwards, the instructor employs a Web-based applet that visually displays each method and provides the corresponding numerical approximations.

This is an in-class activity where students learn about the interconnectedness of land use, water quality, and water resource management. Students are assigned a river front parcel of land to develop, unaware that each parcel is connected to someone else's parcel. Each team presents their development choices to the class and learns that all of the river sections are contiguous, leading to discussions about the effects of development and downstream water quality issues.

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In this physics lab, students investigate the effects of different sizes of spools on the effect of torque and moment of inertia.

This site has a collection of role-playing exercises that provide the students with equations and data to use in collaborative problem-solving.

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In this exercise, hydrology students role-play expert witnesses in a mock trial dealing with contamination of groundwater.

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A think, pair, share activity with Socratic questioning to help students begin to understand rocket propulsion.

Explore your own straight-line motion using a motion sensor to generate distance versus time graphs of your own motion. Learn how changes in speed and direction affect the graph, and gain an understanding of how motion can be represented on a graph.

Send-a-problem exercise used to link economic theory covered in a labor economics course with related trends exemplified in a popular press article.

The send-a-problem activity helps students make a connection between real world data and theoretical models.

This lesson will extend the learning on rocks with the Foss kit, Pebbles, Sand, and Silt to include soil. Students will perform the soil sifting activity like the one designed for rocks in the Foss it. Through their work, students will complete a Venn diagram of soil and rocks as a class.

This activity allows students to brainstorm investigable questions, conduct an experiment, and communicate the results related to our invertebrate animal study; specifically sponges and absorption. (Lesson is based on an original activity from "Porifera's Porosity", Holt Science and Technology - Animals, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston 2002, pages 50-51.)

This online module will provide strategies to manage cooperative and problem-based learning in the classroom

Jigsaw version: To prepare, students do background reading on landslides and rock avalanches and read the introductory portion of Hermanns and Strecker's 1999 article on rock avalanches in Argentina. In class, students receive data (assembled from figures in the article) on bedrock geology and physiography, as well as stereonets showing orientations of prominent joint sets, bedding, and foliations in the bedrock. Their task is to answer the question of why gigantic rock avalanches occur is some places but not others in this part of Argentina. Each student receives one of four possible data sets and works with a team to analyze the data and solve the problem for the team's area. Each team member must then individually explain his/her analysis to a group of three other students, one from each of the other teams, and the group then compares the four locations for similarities and differences. The activity gives students practice in interpreting geologic maps, using stereonets, and peer teaching. The activity also connects structural geology to another geoscience discipline.Short case example version: This is an abbreviated version of the jigsaw activity described above and focuses on only one of the rock avalanche areas.

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This lab and demonstration activity involves students conducting chemical reaction experiments to determine the chemical reaction type and writing balanced equations.

In this activity, students learn about volcanism in Yellowstone National Park, focusing on its history of eruption, recent seismicity, hydrothermal events, and ground deformation. They learn how scientists monitor volcanoes (using Mount St. Helens as an example) and then apply that as an open-ended problem to Yellowstone; their problem is to identify a site for a research station.

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