Relationships Among the Nodes of the Geoscience Concept Crystal (GCC)

1. Nature of Geoscience Deep Time Systems the operations of geoscience systems in the context of deep time result in Underlying Philosophy that drives PROCESSES INQUIRY PHENOMENA Result in each other Used to study People as agents Effects on people People DO inquiry People Relationships Among the Nodes of the Geoscience Concept Crystal (GCC) People: implicit in the GCC is an understanding that there is an external reality and that Geoscience is a human construct that attempts to describe that reality

2. Applications of the GCC COURSE/CURRICULUM DESIGN: The concept map can be an important tool for people designing their own courses -- the concepts in the map should be ones common and foundational to most intro level courses (although its very possible that individual courses wouldn't "cover" the whole map).  It doesn't necessarily limit what is done in a course, but it can be used as a guide to make sure that most of the class time is addressing concepts that are important and foundational to understanding Earth processes. We have attached an example of a syllabus of a course that was re-engineered using the GCC as a guide. Also attached is a visual course map of an introductory geoscience course based at least partially on the GCC. CURRICULAR COHERENCE: Plans are being made to use the GCC as a tool for geology majors to illustrate how different parts of their program relate to other parts. PROGRAM ASSESSMENT: Faculty can use the GCC to identify programmatic coverage. One idea is to use a poster-sized version of the GCC and have faculty use post-its to identify where in a program’s geoscience courses each aspect of Geoscience is addressed. ASSESSMENT DESIGN: An important aspect of assessment is knowing what knowledge/skills you want to assess, and making sure that your assessment techniques and items align to these knowledge/skills. In this way, the GCC is an important alignment tool for assessments..... if the concepts on the map represent what we as a community think students should be getting from intro courses, then we should be assessing their mastery of these concepts and skills. We have attached an example of some items with their alignment to the GCC.