DESC Online Education Modules Are One Step Closer to Public Release

Review by Educators

In May and June, the SCEC Outreach Program sponsored two full-day workshops to bring together educators so that they could evaluate and advise on the development of earth science educa-tion modules in progress.

Until then, the modules had undergone only scientific review. The workshops provided the authors their first opportunity for direct discussions with the potential users of their products.

Caltech's Egill Hauksson, Katrin Hafner, and John Marquis, the developers of a module on investigating earthquakes through regional seismicity met with teachers and other educators on May 9. Those developing a module on SCIGN's use of GPS data, JPL's Mike Watkins, Andrea Donnellan, and Maggi Glasscoe, attended a similar workshop on June 16. Both modules were originally written for advanced high school students or community college students.

With California K-12 Alliance Regional Director Meridith Osterfeld presiding, the workshops reviewed the modules in light of the state's guidelines for teaching K-12 science as well as state and national achievement standards. Because most children are introduced to our planet and its processes in middle school, the participants focused on whether the modules could be made to fit into today's middle-school classroom.

The discussion at both workshops led to the decision to release the regional seismicity modules for the advanced level in early fall but to design a middle-school version of each as the next step for SCEC's Development of Earth Science Curricula (DESC) Online project. The SCIGN module has already been released, and plans are in the works for the development of a middle-school version of it as well.

As part of the process for making the modules more accessible to middle-schoolers, the workshops produced a "storyline" for each module, i.e., a conceptual flow to make the learning process more like a storytelling experience. The storylines are being integrated into the modules. The higher-level modules will be used to help train teachers to use the middle-school modules. Pilot testing of the modules will continue in schools throughout Los Angeles County during 1998-99.