Education Commons^™

Laboratory Earth: A Model Of Online K-12 Teacher Coursework, David Gosselin, Julie Thomas, Adrienne Redmond, Cindy S. Larson-Miller, Sara Yendra, Ronald J. Bonnstetter, Timothy F. Slater

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Laboratory Earth, a series of three NASA-Sponsored, on-line graduate courses for K-8 teachers, was designed to meet a variety of learning styles and appeal to teachers‟ motivation to learn the content and improve their teaching. This is especially important to teachers as they seek to demonstrate “highly qualified” status to meet No Child Left Behind standards. These graduate-level courses consist of four modules of two to four lessons each. Pre- and post-course surveys indicated significant increases in teachers‟ (n=51) content knowledge, science teaching efficacy beliefs (STEBI-A), sense of community within the course (LEO) and science teaching enjoyment (STES). Qualitative data …