Assessment of Learning Strategies in a Large-Enrollment, Active-Learning, General Education Geoscience Course

Significant efforts are being made to improve the effectiveness of geoscience education both for geoscience majors and the general student population. What has been missing in many of these efforts is a rigorous assessment of the improvements (if any) in learning outcomes resulting from these new aproaches. As part of an NSF Geoscience Education funded project focused on active learning in large enrollment GenEd classes we are investigating the effectiveness of in-class activities in developing scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills. The class – Earth 101 Natural Disasters: Hollywood vs Reality – is a large enrollment (170 student), GenEd course that satisfies a natural science course requirement for non-science students. The course covers a series of natural disaster topics (2 to 3 weeks on each). Less than 25% of class time is devoted to lecturing, with the majority of time spent in active-learning activities, often times motivated by short clips from disaster films or other media. In this project, we are assessing this learning methodology and the effectiveness of the in-class exercises and activities in developing higher-level science-reasoning skills. Our assessment approach incorporates pre- and post-tests (assessing skills, reasoning, and content) and analyses of student performance on in-class worksheets and other group activity materials. We assessed students thinking focusing on their ability to (1) identify the problems, questions, or issues; (2) consider context and assumptions; (3) present and analyze supporting data; (4) identify conclusions and implications, and each ability was graded ranging from emergent to mastery. Taken together the results of this analysis (which is currently underway and will be presented at the session) provides us with both an assessment of this learning approach for developing important science reasoning skills and also provides information on the development of geoscience content knowledge through an active-learning focused course.