Christopher Keane American Geosciences Institute 10 October 2012

The Workforce Challenge in Geoscience Online Learning and the Geosciences A Discipline-Vertical Approach Vision forward Challenges

Source: AGI's Directory of GeoscienceDepartments

125,000 geoscientists expected to retire 72,000 geoscience job growth by 2018 (BLS) 15,000 total new graduates over the next 10 years Or 45,000 total new graduates if you hire B.S. level Net deficit of over 150,000 by 2021

40,500 are expected in Environmental Engineering and Sciences as a field What’s Driving? Water, operations management in support of Resource Development

Anecdotal evidence of strong opposition to online learning Survey to ~8700 US-based teaching faculty in the geosciences. 458 responses – 0.5% response rate Representing 291 Campuses Likely bias towards faculty favorable to online learning Early responses more favorable in comments Favorable institutions tended to have multiple responders

51% of campuses have online-only degree programs 81% report online learning is in their institution’s strategic direction 5.5% of respondents offer online degree/certificate program  MS in Earth Science Education (5)  GIS certificates (3)  Applied/broadcast meteorology (2)  Geoscience and policy being planned. 11% expect to have a degree program in 3 years

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Basic Geo Course Adv Geo Course Other STEMProfessional Dev General Studies Never Online Course Taking in Geoscience Programs Percent of Programs

28% report teaching online at least once in the last 2 academic years 9% report teaching online each semester of the last 2 academic years 8 of 194 courses were advanced technical topics

Asynchronous 42% Synchronous 26% Blended 27% Augmented 5%

54% of online courses have had field or lab components….. But, only 13% of all respondents think this is possible Cited in comments at #1 reason to object to online courses and/or limit to general education non-major courses.

A Discipline-Vertical Approach

Programs are educating on the science, but geoscience employers need more  Applied skills  Business awareness  Ethics  Regulatory awareness  Legal credentialing (Licenses, OSHA, etc)

Launched jointly by AGI and the American Institute of Professional Geologists Intent to tap expertise of AGI Member Societies Online only program Credit in the form of CEUs

Formal Education Professional Employment Professionalism – Ethics, Business, etc. Licensure and Regulatory Awareness Applied Skills Applied Skills Career Path Career Path

Increase the relevance, and hopefully engagement Accelerate mastery through context Decrease the time for payoff for student Maximize community’s participation  Instructors from the practictioners  Support from the faculty

Start with a ~1 hour webinar, matches normal professional presentation experiences Utilize recorded webinar with assessments in LMS Work with instructor to break recording into sections, augment with text, video, assessments, graphics, etc. Enable full asynchronous, or blended with local faculty

Business for geo professionals is booming, so time availability is a real challenge Many have viewed poor webinars Awkwardness of first webinar Concern for time commitment in evolving course Needing to be topically opportunistic

Hostility of faculty to online learning Faculty are gatekeeper to access students Building awareness of need for pre- professional development Even nominal fees outside of university environment are a challenge