THE BIG CRUNCH: LINKING EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE IN AN ONLINE COURSE OR OUR JOURNEY THROUGH THE MAZE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

The New Framework for Science Education scheduled to be published this summer ties together Earth and Space science education through a small number of core concepts that focus on the commonalities between the two disciplines. This connection is also reflected in the changes in the elementary teacher certification requirements for science in the State of Iowa and moves away from the traditional approach to teaching these disciplines in distinct, often isolated courses covering geology, astronomy, or meteorology.

This new requirement prompted a geologist and an astronomer to create a new two-credit course covering Earth and Space science content at the introductory level with a focus on inquiry and problem-solving. In the hope to minimize the amount of time spent in the day-to-day management of the course during the semester, we chose to deliver the content online and to carefully design it using best practices for distance learning and science pedagogy. This delivery style fits well with our university’s push for online courses at all levels to reach out to a broader student base.

The course is delivered through BlackBoard and is structured around 15 inquiry-based content modules with short paragraphs structured around ‘big picture’ learning goals and supplemented by visuals and short videos. Students have the opportunity to digest content through individual hands-on, in-home experiments and connect them to the ‘big picture’ learning goal through weekly team projects. Students are divided in teams of 4 based on the results of a pretest with the goal of creating balanced teams. During team projects, teams take turns posting one question and answers on the weekly topic. Weekly experiments designed to model scientific exploration are required and reported in the students’ e-fieldbook. Course grade is based on team discussion postings, e-fieldbook content, weekly multiple-choice quizzes, daily weather forecasts, Moon phase recordings, and four online multiple-choice tests. Rubrics were developed for the grading of discussion postings and e-fieldbook and to further support the model of inquiry-based learning. The course is supplemented by a one-credit face-to-face lab taught by a TA. More details on the development process are recorded in our blog http://earthspacescienceed2.wordpress.com/. Comments are welcome.