FOCUSING ON LITERACIES IN GEOSCIENCE COURSES: IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNING – DESIGNING BETTER COURSES

Many geoscience courses strive to provide students with the scientific understanding necessary to make informed decisions about societal issues impacted by geology, such as building homes, aquifer management, waste disposal, etc. Unfortunately, students' understanding of this wealth of geologic and scientific material can be limited due to their lack of exposure to, or practice with, the literacies (tools) necessary to master this content. As part of a FIPSE grant, we identified literacies that students must master to turn content into understanding, and we revised our courses to integrate these literacies into all aspects of the class: reading, lab and lecture.

Redesigning our large Physical Geology course has benefited both students and instructors. Classroom observation has identified those students who profit most from the literacy emphasis to be ones who have managed to avoid mastery of these skills in the past, and students who are uncomfortable asking for help with skills they feel they should already know. Commonly, women and non-traditional students fall into the second category. By starting with very simple literacy skills and moving into complex applications, students learn and master these literacies while learning geology.

Each semester we administer surveys to document class demographics, students' level of literacy experience and mastery, and literacy comfort level. To date, data have been gathered from several hundred students. Although the data do not yield consistent results for every demographic group, they generally correspond with our classroom observations.

Course instructors also benefit from a parallel focus on literacies. By re-examining course content in this new light, we have created better-organized and more relevant exercises. We have also better scaffolded our assignments; we offer extensive assistance early and gradually reduce it as the semester progresses. Both students and teaching assistants have responded positively to these revisions.

Hopefully, the greatest beneficiary of a focus on literacies will be society itself. The ultimate goal of this project is not to teach remedial skills or to present Physical Geology better, but to help students become better prepared citizens, able to make independent, informed decisions.