MAKING YOUR CLASS A DISASTER...ON PURPOSE!: AUTHENTIC SCIENCE IN A LARGE ENROLLMENT GEN-ED CLASS

As part of a mandate at Penn State to improve our General Education courses, in spring 2000 we developed “Earth 101 – Natural Disasters: Hollywood vs. Reality”. Because of students’ natural curiosity about disasters, we have an advantage in terms of inherent interest coming into the course. But, how to get beyond the “ooh and ah” of erupting lava fountains to make the class relevant to each student and significant to their future? This large enrollment (>150 student) introductory course uses natural disasters as the vehicle for students to achieve three learning goals: 1) learn about Earth science processes, 2) develop a feel for scientific reasoning and skepticism, and 3) appreciate the societal consequences of scientific decisions. We use excerpts from Hollywood disaster movies to motivate a suite of exercises and activities to achieve these goals. The most successful activities in the class involve immersing the class in authentic scientific exercises. Research shows that this type of learning is most effective in terms of students' depth of understanding and in promoting life-long scientific curiosity. In one example of this approach, the class role-plays the population of a small town that must decide whether to move the high school out of a lahar path. This exercise is structured such that the class population is broken into groups directly proportional to that of the real town in Washington; with each member of the class “becoming” a particular persona in the town. During the exercise, discussions of scientific issues, disaster probabilities, risk management, and the financial impacts of options are naturally explored within the context of the problem (not as separate, stand-alone lectures). The exercise culminates with a “town meeting” where the students vote (still in character). We conclude the exercise by comparing the decision of our “class town” with how the real town voted. This proves to be exceptionally effective as the students face the real-life consequences of their vote, and the implications of their decision for different townspeople. We find that these activities are not only effective in engaging the students, and making them aware of how an understanding of science is empowering, but Earth 101 is also exhilarating to teach because of the motivation of the students and the resulting quality of their work.