A METHOD TO DECREASE STUDENT MISCONCEPTIONS IN INTRODUCTORY GEOSCIENCE

Lecture Tutorials, a type of interactive worksheet, are designed to combat the problem of students leaving conventional lecture-based introductory geoscience courses with their misconceptions still intact. After a brief lecture on a topic, Lecture Tutorials are completed by students in small groups, adding an interactive component to the class and challenging students to think about common misconceptions. Lecture Tutorials have been successfully developed and used in physics and astronomy, and we are currently developing them for the geosciences.

To test the effectiveness of these Geoscience Lecture Tutorials on increasing student understanding, students were given multiple choice questions pre-Lecture Tutorial (post lecture) and post-Lecture Tutorial. Students showed a significant increase in knowledge after most Lecture Tutorials.

To discover their general attitudes towards the use of Lecture Tutorials, eleven students, representing a range of students in the introductory classes, were interviewed. Students overwhelmingly like using Lecture Tutorials and believe the Lecture Tutorials help them to better understand the material. They feel the questions are well-written and have an appropriate level of difficulty. The students especially enjoy working through the Student 1 vs. Student 2 debate questions on the Lecture Tutorials, where one student on the Lecture Tutorial expresses a commonly held misconception and the other student expresses the accepted scientific interpretation. Students in class must determine which student on the worksheet they agree with and explain why. All students interviewed see the benefits of working in groups, although some still prefer to work independently. Overall, students view Lecture Tutorials as beneficial to their learning.