Instructor Manual

Course Integration

(Under development)

Integrating The Physical Environment into your course curriculum is relatively easy to do. With The Physical Environment you can:

Link assigned readings to support course content
Link lecture notes to specific pages or glossary items
Link lecture outlines to images and graphics
Use multimedia to enrich course content and lectures
Assign “How To..” or “Active Learning” activities to support or replace lab activities
Use “Connections to the Physical Environment” to spark classroom discussion
Use "In the News" to keep students abreast of course-related news
Assign review sections for student self assessment
Support an online course.

Linking to The Physical Environment

Linking to assigned readings

Linking assigned readings is the easiest way to integrate The Physical Environment into your course. Simply copy the URL of the page you are interested in and drop into the code of your lecture notes. Please append the url with a "target=_blank" tag to open the link to The Physical Environment in a new window. Doing so acknowledges the page content was created by someone else and is located outside your course web site. For example, to link to the section on air temperature one specifies the url as

<a target="_blank" href="http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/temperature/title_page.html"> AirTemperature</a>

Linking lecture notes

The compelling reason to use Web-based curriculum is the ability to link information together for deeper understanding. Many instructors are putting lecture notes on the Web for their students. Instructors can link their outline to any part of The Physical Environment to help “flesh out” skeletal outlines. Text headings are coded as bookmarks, enabling deep linking into the text. Many of the important terms and concepts are also bookmarked for linking.

It’s easy to link to a particular page by copying and pasting the url found in the address bar. For deeper linking, view the source code of the page to find a particular bookmark. For a web browser like Internet Explorer one uses "View" -> "Source" to obtain the code.

Say you wish to link to the term “prime meridian” located at http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/essentials/locational_systems.html

Bookmarks use the name tag to identify them as in the following example:

…..<b><i><a name="prime meridian"> prime meridian</a></i></b>, which runs through Greenwich, …..

Take the page url and append it with a # sign followed by the bookmark name to form the correct URL to the term.

http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/essentials/locational_systems.html#prime meridian

Link to images

Instructors are welcome to link to images found in The Physical Environment so long as proper credit is given. The source is given for all images. Contact me if you wish to use an image or graphic that has no author attribution. Either view the source code of the page to find the url of the image (look for img src tags) or view the images properties. To view the properties which include the url of an image, place your cursor over the picture and click the right mouse button. A web browser like Internet Explorer will give you a number of choices with "Properties" usually being one. Find the address of the image and drop it into your html code.

Using Multimedia

Visualization is important for many students to learn. The Physical Environment is supported with a variety of high-quality multimedia to help students learn the complexities of the Earth system. Embed links using the procedures discussed above in online lecture notes at the appropriate location to enhance learning. Much of the linked multimedia content can serve as the basis for creating critical thinking activities. Activity sheets for several of the videos linked from the "Contents" page have been created. Use these as they are or modify to suit your needs.

Active Learning

Opportunities to engage in active learning are embedded throughout the web text. Encourage students to use the embedded chapter assessments to check learning comprehension. Chapter "Active Learning" are exercises designed to apply analytical skills to assess comprehension of chapter content. These activities can be used to support lab portions of a course.

Classroom discussion

The "Connections to the Physical Environment" are meant to illustrate the interrelationships between Earth systems and the human condition. The interactions between human activities and the natural environment can be controversial and require critically analyzing the issue from a variety of perspectives. Use the "Connections..." to spark classroom discussion related to your lecture content.

Current Events

"Physical Geography News Around The Web" links to sites that keep you and your students abreast of current events related to the physical environment. Engage students in current events by using the "In the News" activity. Assign weekly or bi-weekly submissions to develop a bibliography for a term paper.

Student-self assessment

Supporting online courses

Being a digital learning environment, The Physical Environment easily fits into an online physical geography course. You can link to as much or as little as you desire to support your instruction. Link only to those sections that pertain to the content of your course. Tutorials, text, multimedia and active learning assignments are ready made for your course. Wrap a courseware product around The Physical Environment and you're ready to go.