Students work in a jigsaw format, they start in an expert group analyzing one particular aspect of the earthquake that occurred (e.g., tsunami, geologic maps, damage assessment). After analyzing the data/information provided, students get into their new groups, which are a "consulting team" to make recommendations to key governmental officials about the earthquake they studied and implications for future development. These are presented in a poster session style event, which then leads to individual papers that are written about the same topic, which are peer reviewed and revised. Students are asked to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses in the process and to consider changes for future opportunities, as well as connect the curriculum to the overall process of science.

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Working in groups of three, students analyze economies of scale. Each student constructs an individual short-run ATC curve, then the three students collaborate to determine if there are economies or diseconomies of scale and to create the long run ATC.

This classroom activity presents College Algebra students with a ConcepTest, a Question of the Day, and a Write-pair-share activity concerning the effect of the coefficient of x^0 (i.e., the constant, c) on the vertex of a parabola where a and b are arbitrarily fixed values in f(x)=ax^2+bx+c.

This classroom activity presents College Algebra students with a ConcepTest, a Question of the Day, and a Write-pair-share activity concerning the effect of the coefficient of x^2 on the shape of a parabola where b and c are arbitrarily fixed values in f(x)=ax^2+bx+c.

This classroom activity presents College Algebra students with a ConcepTest, a Question of the Day, and a Write-pair-share activity concerning the effect of the coefficient of x on the vertex of a parabola where a>0, b<0 and a and c are fixed values in f(x)=ax^2+bx+c.

This classroom activity presents College Algebra students with a ConcepTest and a Question of the Day activity concerning the effect of the initial value, C, on the y-intercept and position of an exponential function where C<0 and k is an arbitrarily fixed value in f(x)=Ce^(kx

This classroom activity presents College Algebra students with a ConcepTest and a Question of the Day activity concerning the effect of the initial value, C, on the y-intercept and position of an exponential function where C>0 and k is an arbitrarily fixed value in f(x)=Ce^(kx).

This classroom activity presents College Algebra students with a ConcepTest and a Question of the Day activity concerning the effect of the proportionality constant, k, on the y-intercept and position of an exponential graph where k<0 and C is an arbitrarily fixed value in f(x)=Ce^(kx).

This classroom activity presents College Algebra students with a ConcepTest and a Question of the Day activity concerning the effect of the proportionality constant, k, on the y-intercept and position of an exponential graph where k>0 and C is an arbitrarily fixed value in f(x)=Ce^(kx).

This classroom activity introduces students to energy flow through organisms, producers & photosynthesis, and consumers & respiration.

The classic campus-based project is an environmental or sustainability assessment, often referred to as an environmental audit. This course, taught at Carleton in 2001, describes how this type of project can be undertaken. In this scenario, a student, campus environmental group or class researches aspects the envinormental impact of the school.

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This activity produces a fluent choral reading of Our Big Home: An Earth Poem, by Linda Glaser, when cooperative student groups rehearse, conduct vocabulary word study, and perform for their 4th grade peers.

This activity is a field investigation where students find real-life examples of erosion in their school surroundings. Students will extend what they learned during stream table lessons about erosion, deposition, deltas, meandering streams, and dams.

In this in-class exercise, students compare several lines of evidence that support the ideas of continental drift and plate tectonics. Before the class meeting, each student is given a preparation assignment in which he/she studies one "continental drift" and one "ocean floor data" map. In class, students divide into teams of 3, with each team member having prepared different specialties. They discuss their respective maps and look for spatial patterns among the data.

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Pairs of students respond to literature alternately in shared journals. Mini-lessons are presented on responding to prompts, creating dialogue, adding drawings, and asking and answering questions.

1. Instructor identifies an appropriate number of key dates in the Precambrian to investigate.
2. Students break into groups (method to be determined by instructor) and each group will be assigned a particular time in the Precambrian (one author likes to have groups draw assignments out of hat!).
3. Students investigate their time period using appropriate source materials (we suggest the class notes, textbook and perhaps supplementary materials identified in the form of popular articles (e.g., Scientific American, Smithsonian, National Geographic, etc.) or websites.
Questions

Using your prior knowledge of your time period, what scientific equipment might you want to take with you?
What will you experience on your time travels?
Is there a place to land?
What is the temperature?
Can you breathe the atmosphere?
Do you need a life support system?
What is the atmosphere composed of?
Is there any water? What is its phase? Can you drink it?
Do you see any life, or evidence of its presence? How would you recognize the life?
What life do you expect to observe or not observe, and why?
What questions were you able to answer with your trip?
What questions were you unable to answer?
What aspects of the environment at this time most surprised or stuck you?

4. Group presentation
a) Create a very simple PowerPoint presentation (10 minutes) for the class.
b) Each group member must present part of the information.

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The Externalities Game is a non-cooperative game that teaches students about the concept of environmental externalities and allows them to directly experience the moral dimensions of collective action problems. It has been particularly effective for teaching students about the moral aspects of the climate change. Grades are used to create the tension between earning individual grade points at the expense of group benefit. This is part of a research project funded by the National Science Foundation.

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Interaction and adventure draws high school and elementary school students together as they analyze stories about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

How do soils develop over time? Perhaps the best place to learn is a across a chrosequence of deposits that span a wide range in age (and appearance). If we can identify parent material and measure its chemical composition, it can be used as a benchmark for comparison with the chemical composition of soils that were formed from it. This enables us to quantify the degree of chemical depletion. In general we expect older soils to be more depleted, all else equal. But older soils might also be subject to greater physical erosion, in addition to chemical weathering. This complicates the assessment of soil development because the eroded material is no longer present.

Students are presented with two alternate hypotheses about the soils/deposits they visit:
a) the material has been weathering w/ little physical erosion since it was deposited
b) the material has been weathering and eroding since it was deposited
These hypotheses are developed in lectures before the activity and are based on principles of conservation of mass.

During their site visit, students coarsely characterize topography (@2 -- 5 m scale) for several "representative" cross sections. If time is limited this step could be done remotely (e.g., with topo maps and Google earth).

Students assess and discuss evidence for erosional (and depositional) processes since the deposits were created. They look for broad topographic signatures and measure (for example) the spatial density and material volume of tree throw and animal burrowing mounds, if present.

Students also assess and discuss evidence for in-situ weathering (e.g., development of rinds, soil texture, and mineral alteration). The idea is to train their eyes to observe and key in on any site-to-site differences.

Students dig (and discover!) at select sites. They sample soils at regular intervals from pits (with discussion of merits of different sampling approaches e.g., random vs. stratified random). Students discuss relationships in excavated pits.

A jigsaw approach would be an effective way to tackle the large number of field tasks outlined here.

Back in the lab, using literature values, students estimate weathering rates for each deposit. They compare their estimates with back-of-the-envelop estimates for physical erosion rates (based on tree throw/animal burrowing density) and literature values of diffusivity (which can be coupled with curvature measurements).

The instructor promotes discussion of the implications of differences in residence time on weathering rate estimates.

Students analyze samples by XRF; depending on the course's time constraints students are provided with geochemical data from previous year's field effort or other existing data (in this case Taylor and Blum, 1995).

Students are asked to prepare a final report focusing on the following questions: Are soils products of erosion and weathering, or are they being formed in place by weathering alone? Under what circumstances can we expect erosion to dominate over weathering and visa versa? Students first prepare figures and then use them to develop an an outline (reviewed by the instructor) for their report. Students prepare a draft and engage in peer review (one review each). Students revise their reports, based on the peer review comments, and submit their final report.
Designed for a geomorphology course

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This is a two-part activity that implements an extension of the "think-pair-share" cooperative learning technique to study the determinants of supply and demand through hypothetical and real world examples.