FOCUS ON STUDENT LEARNING: USING GEOLOGY EDUCATION MASTER'S PROGRAMS TO TRANSFORM TEACHING AND LEARNING IN GEOSCIENCE DEPARTMENTS

Accreditation agencies are pressuring Universities and Colleges to take greater responsibility for student learning. Recently, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NCCU) asked Brigham Young University (BYU) to more fully focus on student learning and assess the progress. They specifically requested BYU departments to (1) define expected learning outcomes at the program and course level, (2) show that students achieve these outcomes, and (3) provide evidence that assessments are used to continue improvement of teaching and learning. At the course level, complying with NCCU's mandates will require professors to (1) research student-centered pedagogical techniques, (2) implement new techniques, and (3) assess the effectiveness of any changes made. And while these are standard procedure for educational research, the majority of professors throughout a typical university are untrained in this field, and they simply do not have the time to learn the necessary background information and techniques on their own. In the BYU Department of Geological Sciences, we are piloting a program designed to surmount this obstacle by employing graduate students in our Geology Education M.S. program to assist professors in course redesign and evaluation. The pilot involved the redesign of a Sedimentology and Stratigraphy course required for Geology majors. Our preliminary evaluation of the course suggested that while the professor's main stated learning objective was for students to be able to apply basic concepts to solve realistic problems, the students were not given enough in-class practice developing this skill. Therefore, the course was redesigned to be more student-focused, incorporating active, collaborative, and problem-based learning techniques. In addition, students were required to take more responsibility for coming prepared to class, and the professor was coached to improve in-class questioning skills, and strategies for continuing improvement of the course. Our final evaluation suggests that the changes have effectively focused instruction on student learning, helping to reveal student misconceptions, and areas needing further improvement. Students in the redesigned class were better able than students from previous semesters to apply basic concepts to solve realistic problems.