STIMULATING STUDENT INTEREST WITH SMARTPHONES: INCREASING UNDERGRADUATE MOTIVATION TO LEARN GEOSCIENCE WITH VIRTUAL GRAND CANYON FIELD TRIP

Many higher-education institutions’ introductory geoscience courses are high-enrollment (100+ students) and taught with the traditional lecture-style that is not the most effective at engaging students. This study examines student interest in high-enrollment classes by bringing the engaging field trip experience to campus via the students’ own smartphones and tablets. This NSF-TUES funded project developed three virtual field trip experiences for Androids and iPhones/iPads (on geologic time, geologic structures, and hydrologic processes) and tested their impact on student interest to learn geoscience.

The results of this study, involving 873 students from five institutions, show that students who completed all three virtual field trip modules were statistically significantly more interested in learning the geosciences than control students who did not complete any (mean interest for 3 modules was 58.12 out of 70, for 1 module was 51.58 out of 70, and for 0 modules was 50.01 out of 70). Hierarchical linear modeling results indicate three strong predictors for student interest toward learning the geosciences: 1) initial interest, 2) STEM major, and 3), the number of virtual field trip modules they complete. The virtual Grand Canyon field trips for mobile smart devices are an accessible, inexpensive resource that bring field trips to campus in lieu of students experiencing none at all. Furthermore, this study opens the door to this genre of mobile-game-like pedagogy for geoscience, and all STEM, education at the higher education level.