This development effort was one component of the Ohio Sea Grant project entitled

EXPANDING DELIVERY MODES FOR EDUCATION ABOUT GREAT LAKES  SYSTEMS

Responsible Investigator(s): Rosanne W. Fortner and Joseph L. Arvai, School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University

From 2002-2005, the Ohio Sea Grant College Program is supporting a project that will help disseminate Great Lakes education through new methods, including "E-curriculum" materials using a decision making approach for Great Lakes issues.

Goal
The project goal is to increase the geographic and scientific literacy of Ohioâs secondary teachers and students through increased access to and appropriate use of data about the interdisciplinary sciences of the Great Lakes and how the lake systems change over time. At each stage in new curriculum delivery modes the project will include the teaching of skills reflecting the state of the art in the decision sciences, so that people may utilize their enhanced scientific literacy for individual and group decisions about environmental issues related to Lake Erie and the Great Lakes system.
 

Curriculum development steps:

The entire curriculum development process is designed for scientific accuracy and pedagogial effectiveness. It goes like this:

1. Project staff review the types of data available, selecting datasets with topic areas appropriate to the high school curriculum and whose researchers are interested in sharing with education audiences. This staff group organizes the datasets for consistent internal format, utility for high school classrooms (manageable size), and purpose for learning. The latter means that some data will be incomplete or illustrative of a trend, encouraging hypothesis formation about relationships or concepts demonstrated by the information and introducing the concept of decision making under conditions of scientific uncertainty.

2. High school teachers with experience in the Ohio Sea Grant Education Program and familiarity with Great Lakes data and applications work as curriculum developers along with the project staff. The goal is for each teacher to produce several activities, each of which addresses two or more proficiency requirements and ideally relates two or more datasets. Within the constraints of the data, the widest range of topics, proficiency goals, activity types and data types are developed.

3. Formative evaluation is done in two forms: researchers in the topic areas review the draft activities for accuracy and appropriate representation of the science; teachers (other than the developers) use the either the hard-copy or draft electronic activities in class under the observation of project staff. The pilot test teachers provide feedback on the activity as well.

4. Project staff revise activities and develop Internet forms of implementation of the lessons. If the revisions indicated by the pilot test are substantial, the activity is tested again before it is made public on the Internet.

Dissemination of curriculum products
-- through science teacher organizations, with presentations by teacher-developers and Project Directors
-- as CD-ROM and within computer workshops
-- through e-mail listserves for teachers who have been Sea Grant education program participants
-- notices in Great Lakes and environmental education newsletters
-- through the distance learning modules that will be designed in Year 3.
 

HOME                                  DECISION MAKING                           PrOACT                       LESSONS