REBUILDING THE EARTH SCIENCE COURSE

Increasing dissatisfaction with the 4 credit Earth Science course, delivered in traditional lecture-lab mode to a student audience of nonscience majors, led the author to participate during the summer of 2005 in the online version of the NAGT/DLESE On the Cutting Edge workshop 'Course Design'. With the mentoring of the course's teachers and fellow participants, the redefinition of course goals resulted in the abandonment of the typical survey of astronomic, meteorologic, and geologic topics ("the jack of all trades, master of none approach"). The framework of the course now centers upon scientific inquiry and consists of four content units: the testing of the plate tectonics concept, testing of the IPCC prediction regarding increased storminess, testing the Alvarez hypothesis, and testing the Milankovitch hypothesis.

Each of the four units integrates the geoscience disciplines by application of specific topics to addressing each unit's primary focus. For example, the IPCC prediction unit introduces and applies topics of meteorology, climatology, oceanography, and coastal geology.

Students now work in small groups utilizing a variety of inquiry-based active learning approaches; I lecture only 5-6 times a semester. Most content is "delivered" via lab procedures and online database data acquisition and interpretation activities. All coursework is web-based and is accessed and archived on our course's Blackboard® course management site.