SCIENCE IN THE CITY: EXCITING URBAN STUDENTS ABOUT GEOSCIENCE

In July, 2010, seventy-three urban middle and high school students participated in a 6-day geoscience workshop at York College, City University of New York, Jamaica, NY. The program, funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation, intended to motivate students to pursue the study of earth science at the university level. Participants were recruited from schools connected to the College through a student research competition program. The ethnically diverse student population was evenly split between boys and girls. The students’ 6-hour day began with lectures by college faculty on a range of geoscience topics including hydrogeology, natural disasters and astronomy. During the afternoons, groups of 25 students participated in activities planned and implemented by three undergraduate Geology majors who are pursuing secondary earth science teacher certification. The workshop activities were designed to connect the geoscience concepts to the students’ daily experiences in their urban environment and included role play, video, computer simulations, models and other hands on investigation.

Students were surveyed at the end of each day to ascertain their perceptions of the workshop activities. Questions concerned the impacts of their experiences on their motivation to pursue the study of earth science. The survey consisted of questions with a five point Likert scale for each individual activity and open-ended questions for each day. Both the lectures and the workshop activities were evaluated in the students’ daily survey. Another survey using the Likert scale and open-ended questions was taken by the students on the final day to determine an overall impression of the workshop.

Preliminary review of the collected data shows that students feel they enjoyed themselves and learned more doing the activities as opposed to the lectures. Preliminary review also reflects that a few students found the lectures engaging, while many students felt the lectures were too long and tedious. In conducting further analysis we will describe detailed patterns of students responses. We will explore the students’ perspective to help formulate better activities and lesson plans based on this feedback. We will propose ways that what students told us during the summer should affect geoscience teaching during the academic year.