Field courses are essential for subjects like Earth Sciences, Geography and Ecology. In these topics, GIS is used to manage and analyse spatial data, and offers quantitative methods that are beneficial for fieldwork. This paper presents changes made to a first-year Earth Sciences field course in the French Alps, where new GIS methods were…

Modern data collection in the Earth Sciences has propelled the need for understanding signal processing and time-series analysis techniques. However, there is an educational disconnect in the lack of instruction of time-series analysis techniques in many Earth Science academic departments. Furthermore, there are no platform-independent freeware…

The adoption of active learning instructional practices in college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses has been shown to result in improvements in student learning, contribute to increased retention rates, and reduce the achievement gap among different student populations. Descriptions of active learning strategies…

Research has shown that asking conceptually based questions along with a personal response system (clickers) is an effective way of implementing the peer instruction pedagogy. Lecture tutorials are a paper-based method that also incorporates peer instruction. Past research has shown that both methods yield significant learning gains for students…

Describes two occasions where television has been used to record a series of tutorials in mathematics and earth science to improve the performance of those conducting the tutorials. The opportunity for playback, analysis, and discussion with colleagues was especially valuable. (Author)

Describes the audiotutorial program in earth science at St. Petersburg Junior College's Clearwater Campus started ten years ago. Although initial expenses were considered high, they are now equivalent to those of traditional delivery systems, and students come away with better grades and more positive attitudes. (Author/JN)