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The ability to identify one’s own confusion and to ask a question that resolves it is an essential metacognitive skill that supports self-regulation (Winne, 2005). Yet, while students receive substantial training in how to answer questions, little classroom time is spent training students how to ask good questions. Past research has shown that students are able to pose more high-quality questions after being instructed in a taxonomy for classifying the quality of their questions (Marbach‐Ad & Sokolove, 2000). As pilot data collection in preparation for a larger study funded through NSF-DUE, we provided engineering statics students training in writing high-quality questions to address their own confusions. The training emphasized the value of question-asking in learning and how to categorize questions using a simple taxonomy based on prior work (Harper et al., 2003). The taxonomy specifies five question levels: 1) an unspecific question, 2) a definition question, 3) a question about how to do something, 4) a why question, and 5) a question that extends knowledge to a new circumstance. At the end of each class period during a semester-long statics course, students were prompted to write and categorize a question that they believed would help them clarify their current point of greatest confusion. Through regular practice writing and categorizing such questions, we hoped to improve students' abilities to ask questions that require higher-level thinking. We collected data from 35 students in courses at two institutions. Over the course of the semester, students had the opportunity to write and categorize twenty of their own questions. After the semester, the faculty member categorized student questions using the taxonomy to assess the appropriateness of the taxonomy and whether students used it accurately. Analysis of the pilot data indicates three issues to be addressed: 1) Student compliance in writing and categorizing their questions varied. 2) Some students had difficulty correctly coding their questions using the taxonomy. 3) Some student questions could not be clearly characterized using the taxonomy, even for faculty raters. We will address each of these issues with appropriate refinements in our next round of data collection: 1) Students may have been overwhelmed with the request to write a question after each class period. In the future, we will require students to write and categorize at least one question per week, with more frequent questions encouraged. 2) To improve student use of the taxonomy in future data collection, students will receive more practice with the taxonomy when it is introduced and more feedback on their categorization of questions during the semester. 3) We are reformulating our taxonomy to accommodate questions that may straddle more than one category, such as a question about how to extend a mathematical operation to a new situation (which could be categorized as either a level 3 or 5). We are hopeful that these changes will improve accuracy and compliance, enabling us to use the intervention as a means to promote metacognitive regulation and measure changes as a result, which is the intent of the larger scope of the project. 

Increased use and improved methodology of carbonate clumped isotope thermometry has greatly enhanced our ability to interrogate a suite of Earth‐system processes. However, interlaboratory discrepancies in quantifying carbonate clumped isotope (Δ₄₇) measurements persist, and their specific sources remain unclear. To address interlaboratory differences, we first provide consensus values from the clumped isotope community for four carbonate standards relative to heated and equilibrated gases with 1,819 individual analyses from 10 laboratories. Then we analyzed the four carbonate standards along with three additional standards, spanning a broad range of δ⁴⁷and Δ₄₇values, for a total of 5,329 analyses on 25 individual mass spectrometers from 22 different laboratories. Treating three of the materials as known standards and the other four as unknowns, we find that the use of carbonate reference materials is a robust method for standardization that yields interlaboratory discrepancies entirely consistent with intralaboratory analytical uncertainties. Carbonate reference materials, along with measurement and data processing practices described herein, provide the carbonate clumped isotope community with a robust approach to achieve interlaboratory agreement as we continue to use and improve this powerful geochemical tool. We propose that carbonate clumped isotope data normalized to the carbonate reference materials described in this publication should be reported as Δ₄₇(I‐CDES) values for Intercarb‐Carbon Dioxide Equilibrium Scale.