"RETHINKING ROCKS" TO OPTIMIZE GEOSCIENCE TEACHING FOR ALL

“Rethinking Rocks” is a curriculum for intro geology labs driven by student inquiry that turns the prevailing framework (give students a box of rocks and have them use an identification guide to match given properties to printed descriptions) on its head. In this curriculum, students are responsible for uncovering observable characteristics on which to base a native classification for the specimens. Students are charged with creating their own hypotheses of relationship among the specimens, and attempting to classify all their specimens following their classification rules provides a test of their hypotheses. “Rethinking Rocks” shifts the focus of traditional introductory geology laboratories from rote identification of rock types to understanding the Earth history represented by the specimens. Participants have reported a paradigm shift in their understanding from thinking of rocks as “just rocks” to the realization that rocks have encoded in them Earth history that is accessible to all who take the time to look closely, not just geoscientists.

The Rethinking Rocks module has proven to be effective in its initial offerings, not only in quantitatively assessable improvement in test scores, but in self-reported improvement in classroom student-student and student-instructor interactions. Replacing instructor-centric lab lectures with student-centric problem solving empowers students as they are transformed from passive “vessels" to active participant in their learning. This module potentially is easily transferable to other courses, including general education courses, and could ultimately reach an annual audience of over 1,000 students at MSU, alone.