BRINGING GEOLOGY TO LIFE THROUGH FIELDTRIPS AND COLLABORATIVE LEARNING - A MODEL FOR SUCCESS IN COMMUNITY COLLEGE GEOSCIENCE DEPARTMENTS

Community college geosciences departments are at an important crossroads. As enrollment numbers indicate, more students are utilizing the community college system. Many of the students who take a geoscience class do so to take a science they fear the least. Therefore, a physical geology class taught to students who don’t plan to continue in geology or who don’t like science must be taught differently than one to science majors. Most of the high schools in our area do not offer earth science. As community college instructors it is incumbent upon us to enable our students to become geoscience literate. We accomplish this goal through the use of fieldtrips, collaborative learning projects, and scaffolding. Since implementing this teaching strategy, geology student retention rates have gone up and student feedback has been positive.

At Lone Star College – Tomball in Texas, we strive to engage students in collaborative learning and to make geology relevant to them and their lives. During class, connections are made through the use of Socratic questioning linking past experiences with new knowledge. Each topic is connected to previous topics so that learning is built layer upon layer and previous knowledge is retained.

A great number of our students are future teachers. By getting these students excited about the Earth we help them to instill an interest in the Earth in future generations. One important method we use to accomplish this goal is local fieldtrips. Geology is brought to life for our students on these local fieldtrips and they begin to notice their world around them. After attending the fieldtrips they see rather than just look at their surroundings which enables them to make new discoveries and it enriches their outdoor experiences.

In the Houston area, urban flooding is a significant problem and understanding the causes and mitigation methods of urban flooding is important in the lives of local residents. In addition, our proximity to the coast means that coastal issues such as beach erosion and coastal development are topics the students can relate to. By making geology relevant to the students through the use of local geology, fieldtrips, and collaborative learning projects using real-life examples, students become more engaged with geology and are more likely to remember what they have learned in the years to come.