Methods Used to Improve the Scaffolding and Clarity of Introductory Geoscience Lecture Tutorials

Many introductory geoscience lecture classes allow students to leave with their misconceptions still intact. The authors designed a workbook of Lecture Tutorials (interactive worksheets) to address this problem by adding an interactive component to the class and challenging students to think about misconceptions. The structure of each Lecture Tutorial builds from simpler, introductory (scaffolding) questions and concludes with a large-picture question indicating a successful deviation from the misconception.

Previous improvements to the Lecture Tutorials were based on in-class observations by the instructors and review of student responses. For this study, student feedback after they completed a Lecture Tutorial was also collected via questionnaires asking about the difficulty, clarity, and helpfulness of the questions.

Generally the student questionnaires were useful in rewording individual questions for clarity or for adding additional scaffolding questions. Student questionnaires indicate a successful structure of the Lecture Tutorial when students wrote that the first questions were not too difficult and the last questions helped them to understand the topic better. However, when this was not the case, student comments were not helpful in trying to improve the format. Also, the different abilities of the students sometimes resulted in different comments, since questions that some students considered too difficult were thought by others to be helpful. When revising the overall structure of the Lecture Tutorials, the instructor's observations and discussions with students as they completed the Lecture Tutorials were the most helpful.

Studies of the effectiveness of curricular materials often use student comments to aid in their revision. We found that for improving the wording and confirming the effectiveness of organization, student feedback was useful. However, for organization revisions and for providing a context for the student comments, it is important the instructor observes the students as well. Please contact the authors about using Lecture Tutorials.