RESULTS FROM THE FIRST IMPLEMENTATION OF ACTIVE LEARNING INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNIQUES IN INTRODUCTORY GEOLOGY CLASSES

College introductory science classes are typically the last opportunity that most students ever have to learn science in a formal setting, but students often struggle with course vocabulary and are typically unprepared to develop successful strategies to learn the material. These struggles, coupled with traditional pedagogical methods that normally lead instructors to misjudge students’ understanding, ultimately result in unchanged misconceptions about science and in little gain in conceptual knowledge. For example, it is well documented that traditional teaching methods produce small, negligible, or even negative gains in students’ knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts. To increase students’ conceptual and knowledge understanding and to improve their attitude towards science, a consensus exists about the need to develop novel teaching strategies that are based on a new teaching paradigm in which the class dynamic is fundamentally altered from a teacher-centered to a student-centered approach. Although some of these new methodologies have been implemented in geoscience classes successfully, no direct comparison between these different instructional techniques exists to date. In this study, I evaluated the first implementation of two active learning teaching methods (peer instruction and lecture tutorials) in small- to medium-size introductory physical geology classes. Evaluation of their effectiveness was measured through the Geoscience Concept Inventory, which was administered at the beginning (pre-test) and at the end (post-test) of each course. A comparison of pre- and post-test results indicates that both methods provided statistically significant cognitive knowledge and understanding gains. A comparison of the post-test results for both methods reveals no statistical distinction, indicating a similar level of effectiveness for both peer instruction and lecture tutorials. Similarly, the vast majority of students indicated that these teaching techniques were instrumental in helping them learn different geologic concepts. The combined results of this study are consistent with others studies showing a near doubling in cognitive knowledge and understanding gains whenever active learning instructional techniques are first implemented in science classes.