Christopher Keane

American Geosciences Institute

10 October 2012

The

Workforce Challenge in Geoscience

Online

Learning and the Geosciences

A

Discipline-Vertical ApproachVision forward

Challenges

Source: AGI's Directory of GeoscienceDepartments

0

1,000

2,000

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4,000

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7,000

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8019

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11

Deg

rees

Aw

arde

d

Year

US Geoscience Degrees Granted1973-2011

Bachelor's

Master's

Doctorate

1

25,000 geoscientists expected to retire

7

2,000 geoscience job growth by 2018 (BLS)

1

5,000 total new graduates over the next 10 years

O

r 45,000 total new graduates if you hire B.S. level

N

et 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 STEM Professional Dev

General Studies

Never

Online Course Taking in Geoscience Programs

Pe

rce

nt

of

Pro

gra

ms

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

Asynchronous42%

Synchronous26%

Blended27%

Augmented5%

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

Form

al Educa

tion

Pro

fess

ion

al

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plo

ym

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fess

ion

alis

m –

Eth

ics,

Busi

ness

, etc

.Pro

fess

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Eth

ics,

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ness

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Lice

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re a

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Regula

tory

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are

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re a

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are

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Applie

dSki

lls

Applie

dSki

lls

CareerPath

CareerPath

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