Research studies for designing undergraduate geology courses and activities

Abstract

From designing virtual field experiences to addressing common misunderstandings to connecting geology coursework with careers and community concerns, geoscience education research can help inform effective geology teaching. This issue shares Research papers that can be applied in the development of undergraduate geology curricula. Virtual field experiences for both introductory and advanced geology students were already under development before COVID lockdowns brought them to the attention of the entire geology community. Ruberto and coauthors had developed virtual field trips to the Grand Canyon, and in this issue, they compare their results with an in-person trip. Although the two trips weren’t identical (the in-person trip involved a walk along the canyon rim, whereas the virtual trip included footage from the bottom of the canyon), the virtual trip showed impressive gains in both learning outcomes and student attitudes. In contrast, COVID travel restrictions pushed Guillaume, Laurent, and Genge to create 3D virtual projects to substitute for upper-level field work. The projects forced students to make their own choices about where to go and what to observe, as if they were in the field themselves. The virtual projects removed some sources of stress (such as weather, physical exhaustion, and difficulty in finding the instructors), but they still missed aspects of the psychomotor domain. These two studies show that active learning and student autonomy are important for both virtual and in-person field experiences to be effective. Introductory students often struggle with some of the core concepts that lead into the geology major. Minerals, for example, can be challenging because students bring prior ideas about crystals and rocks into the class. Manzanares, Anderson, and Pugh interviewed non-geology students about their alternate conceptions. I found some of their results quite surprising I hadn’t realized that students might think that mica cleavage was sedimentary layering, or that a mineral’s fragility was related to its age. Anyone who teaches an introductory geology class should read this paper to help understand why their students are often frustrated and confused in mineral labs. Plate tectonics can also be confusing for introductory students. Polifka, Cervato, and Holme hypothesized that spatial ability (as measured by perspective-taking, visualizing rotations, and the water-level task) might explain those struggles. They gave students several tests of spatial ability, and then had students take a quiz in which students could choose between several different ways to visualize plate boundaries to help them answer the questions. They found no relationship between the general spatial skills and the plate tectonics assessment scores. In upper-level courses, the struggles are different, but they continue (and might be related to the simplifications used to help introductory students). Kreager, LaDue, and Shipley looked at the errors that sedimentary geology students make before and after being taught to use Wheeler diagrams (a common visualization used in sequence stratigraphy). Students made similar mistakes before and after learning about the diagrams. The authors have suggestions for teaching approaches that could help students understand sequence stratigraphy better. Other challenges in upper-level courses involve preparing students for the world after graduation. Viskupic and coauthors took a mixed-methods approach to understanding the challenges that geoscience students face when searching for a career. They found that students weren’t sure what jobs were possible, and didn’t find campus career centers to be useful. To help their students, the authors developed a course based on cognitive information processing theory. Students thought about what they wanted from a career, explored their options, and made plans for future job searches. I suspect that other departments will find the supplemental materials very helpful if they want to design a similar course, or to embed activities into an existing course. One example of embedding broader learning outcomes in a standard course for geology majors comes from Nyarko, Fore, and Licht. Their sedimentology class included a focus on ethics, and they collected student reflections before and after a course field project. Students discussed responsibilities to inform society, to care for nature and other species, to collect data competently, and to be honest and trustworthy. They suggest that other instructors could also use reflective assessment strategies, in addition to examination of the codes of conduct for professional geoscience organizations and group discussions to help calibrate individual ideas about ethics. In addition to responsibilities to nature, geoscientists have an ethical responsibility to communities who are affected by our research. As Southern and coauthors discuss, there is a tension between the expectations of academia (for results