Stratigraphic profile

Provenance: Nicole LaDue
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Formative assessment questions using a classroom response system ("clickers") can be used to reveal students' spatial understanding.
Students are shown this diagram and instructed to "Click on a layer within the red box that is more resistant to weathering than the other two layers."

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Size, Scales, and Specialization was developed as part of an effort by the Quantitative Biology at Community Colleges group to provide materials that incorporate mathematical concepts into biology courses. The activity uses published estimates of cell type numbers in the human body along with size, density and weight as a lens to have students calculate ratios, explore exponents, and better understand how the various cell types contribute to an average human's total weight and size. The activity is applicable for majors and non-majors biology courses, and maps to Chapter 4 of the OpenStax Biology 2e textbook. This activity could also be used in a mathematics course as a biologically relevant example.

The activity contains a pre-assessment to gauge student understanding of the material and provides an opportunity for students to predict the number of various cell types, as well as the mass of various cell types, in the human body. This prediction activity is followed with a guided approach to calculating these values. After guiding the students in this activity, students will then have a chance to practice the activity on a new set of cell data provided.

After completing this module students should be able to:

- Compare and contrast the structure and function of different cell types.
-- List the largest and the smallest cells in the body based on number.
-- List the largest and the smallest cells in the body based on mass.
- Describe the advantages of specialization in eukaryotic cells.
-- Give examples of how specialization in cell types affects cell size (volume) and shape.
- Perform measurements and conversions using the metric system.
-- Measure the scale of cell size variation in the human body
-- Calculate the relative proportions of cell types in the human body by mass and frequency

After covering the standard course material on area under a curve, Riemann sums and numerical integration, Calculus I students are given a write-pair-share activity that directs them to predict the best area approximation methods for each of several different functions. Afterwards, the instructor employs a Web-based applet that visually displays each method and provides the corresponding numerical approximations.

Images of the James River in Virginia, including one at flood stage, and of potholes, all of which can be used to have the students make observations, estimates, and interpretations.

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The design of this short Lecture Tutorial worksheet allows students to make predictions of what
rock types they would expect to find on other planets. After a brief lecture, students work in
groups to answer the questions to help them understand the conditions of formation for the three
rock types.

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Students are asked think-pair-share questions to predict the interaction of alpha particles fired toward the nucleus of an atom. An online applet is used to illustrate the interaction and test students' ideas for the causes of the interaction. This activity uses a resource in the comPADRE partner collection.

A think, pair, share activity with Socratic questioning to help students begin to understand rocket propulsion.

An interactive lecture that uses flash animations showing the researcher and their experiments that were used to develop the basic concepts in Mendelian genetics. Includes multiple choice questions students can answer in class.

After using the historical development of the Standard Model to develop introductory understanding, students link to OPAL and DELPHI data archives from CERN to identify and study the tracks from elementary particles.

Distribute a blank geologic-history timeline to pairs or small groups of students at the start of an Earth History unit or course and ask them work together to fill it out as best they can.

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This activity is a lecture where students learn the basic concept behind stoichiometry, mole ratios.

Students are directed to read through a Web-based tutorial on Symmetry and Tilings in the form of an short and colorful article entitled Tilings and Tesselations; afterwards, they answer several questions on tilings (tessellations), tiling terminology, types of symmetry (isometries), periodic tilings and Penrose tilings.

The newly emerging field of Systems Geobiology requires linkage of biological processes with geological processes across broad scales of time (nanoseconds to eons) and space (nanometers to light years). Students are asked to specifically identify the scales of time and space across which Systems Geobiology research needs to be completed. They do this by making direct observations of a field photograph taken at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. Students then translate 10 of their observations onto Powers of 10 charts. This is followed by a class discussion of their results on topics such as: What is missing? How will these analyses be synthesized across such broad scales?

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The goal of this module, developed at Gustavus Adolphus College for the InTeGrate project, is to introduce college students to the general concepts of scientific theory versus facts, scientific certainty and the role experts particularly in the context of climate change. The module also focuses on a recent paper discussing climate departure, and its impact on human society and biodiversity.

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The activity presents a Think-Pair-Share analysis of a metal detector including a simulation.

The activity presents an interactive lecture demonstration of the operation of a transformer using a simulation.

College Algebra or Liberal Arts math students are presented with a ConcepTest, a Question of the Day and a write-pair-share activity involving U.S. population growth. The results are quite revealing and show that while students may have learned how to perform the necessary calculations, their conceptual understanding concerning exponential growth may remain faulty. Student knowledge (or lack thereof) of the size of our population and its annual growth rate may also be surprising.

This activity is designed to help students learn how to interpret Doppler radial velocity radar images with meteorological applications, as well as giving students a chance to practice their spatial skills.

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The focus on soil in this unit is accomplished by browsing and reading or browsing (in some detail) information from nine websites as well as a book chapter. This effort will help students to understand issues relating to soil erosion, the state factors of soil formation, methods of soil description and classification in the field, soil orders, soil surveys and threats to soil. Questions are posed that require written responses and the in-class activity involves a web-based soil survey using the Natural Resources Conservation Service Web Soil Survey. This activity can be accomplished individually or by groups and should involve a short report of findings.

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In this opening unit, students develop the societal context for understanding earthquake hazards using as a case study the 2011 Tohoku, Japan, earthquake. It starts with a short homework "scavenger hunt" in which students find a compelling video and information about the earthquake. In class, they share some of what they have found and then engage in a series of think-pair-share exercises to investigate both the societal and scientific data about the earthquake.

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Online-ready: This opening class discussion about earthquakes and societal impacts could easily be converted to an online discussion format.

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