The Impacts of Immersion-Learning Scheduling on the Geoscience Curriculum at the University of Montana Western

The University of Montana Western is a small (~1200 students) liberal arts university that uses an immersion-learning scheduling system where students take one class at a time for 18 instructional days, averaging 3 hours per day. Using this system, we chose to reduce lecture time in favor of project-based learning and improved continuity of delivery from theory to application. For example, in a typical semester system, geology courses have approximately 45 hours of lecture and 30 hours of lab. With immersion scheduling, our lecture component is never more than half the time, and usually much less. Lecture has become a very diverse activity, including traditional hour-long prepared statements, shorter note-taking sessions seamlessly interwoven with applications, question and answer sessions, and briefings that provide the background necessary to engage students in project work.

Reduced lecture time means students take increased responsibility for learning terminology and concepts, or simply that they have less exposure to those aspects of lecture. However, they gain far more direct experience with concepts and likely gain a better understanding of the scientific process through research in the geosciences. Students learn field and lab skills that can be very difficult to incorporate into traditionally scheduled classes. The practical benefits for graduating students are resumes filled with experiences and skills, and usually one or more professional presentations or papers.

A Cornell Critical Thinking Test given at UMW in 2006 showed a marked increase in performance over an exam given in 2002, prior to the adoption of immersion scheduling. We think enhanced problem-solving skills will be more useful to student's careers than full geo-vocabularies. Our undergraduate students are very competitive for geoscience jobs and employers express satisfaction with their skills and abilities. The program is too young to show statistical improvement in their success in graduate school.