Geoscience employers have increasingly called for the future workforce (students) to demonstrate competence in non-technical skills, including teamwork. This descriptive qualitative study contributes to ongoing efforts to identify the specific practices, skills, habits, and knowledge that make up these desired teamwork competencies in the…

The Geo-Launchpad Program is a pre-Research Experience for Undergraduates (pre-REU) providing a summer internship and professional development for two-year college (2YC) students from Colorado. The program goal was to build students' interest and capacity to engage in geoscience-focused STEM career pathways. The pre-REU helped students develop…

Community colleges are a major entry point for many students to post-secondary education, particularly for minority, first-generation, low-income, and older students. A range of factors including transfer-readiness, curricular alignment, financial barriers, and transfer guidance, influence successful transfer between two-year colleges (2YCs) and…

Although many have suggested the use of games to motivate active learning, studies that evaluate the learning outcomes of games with high school students are scarce. Here, we present the evaluation of the board game "Taphonomy: Dead and Fossilized" as an active learning tool to teach fossilization and Earth systems thinking with rising…

Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been shown to facilitate students' pursuit of graduate studies and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, including geoscience. Less is known about why or how UREs have a lasting impact on participants, particularly through graduate school and into careers.…

A goal of undergraduate geoscience programs is to prepare students for the geoscience workforce. In order to understand the extent to which programs succeed at this goal, we identified desired workforce skills, compiled undergraduate geoscience program requirements, and mapped workforce skills onto faculty responses to the 2016 National Geoscience…

A gap has existed between the tools and processes of scientists working on anthropogenic global climate change (AGCC) and the technologies and curricula available to educators teaching the subject through student inquiry. Designing realistic scientific inquiry into AGCC poses a challenge because research on it relies on complex computer models,…

Creating effective computer-based learning exercises requires an understanding of optimal user interface designs for improving higher order cognitive skills. Using an online volcanic crisis simulation previously shown to improve decision making skill, we find that a user interface using a graphical presentation of the volcano monitoring data…

This paper considers opportunities for teachers to use an argumentation pedagogy in order to develop students' geoscience thinking skills. Educational argumentation principles and procedures are outlined. Argumentation can foster both student and teacher motivation and interest in the context of accessible and well-structured geoscience content.…