CREATING A SPARK: A PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING (PBL) APPROACH TO GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION

A program was developed for 8th grade classrooms using Problem-Based Learning techniques to teach Geosciences and Engineering, corresponding to the 8th grade South Carolina science curriculum. A class was given an unstructured problem: "Develop a research goal in an aspect of Geology that man cannot directly study." The class was then broken into cooperative teams, each with a specifically defined goal.

Each team had to research and work in their area, as well as teach other teams what they learned, what they were doing and communicate their needs and responsibilities to other teams. Teams were modeled on a scientific/engineering framework similiar to that used at NASA and JPL. The program closely followed the NASA Pathfinder/Sojourner robot mission.

The program was taught 2 days per week in a labratory-like setting where students researched the needs of their teams and the larger project and requested the instructor to teach based on those needs. Needs of the project were carefully guided to coincide with the current curriculum during the rest of the week (e.g. space science, engineering, atmosphere, etc.) so that the science class as a whole worked similiar to a university's lab/lecture format.