IMPLEMENTING A PLACE-BASED LEARNING COURSE PROJECT IN THE GEOSCIENCES (FOR NON-SCIENCE MAJORS)

This presentation will demonstate the "myplace" project and how it seeks to enhance the students understanding and appreciation of the earth sciences for introductory college students. Dynamic earth: geos (1000) is a course designed for non-science majors who seek a basic understanding of geology. Students are introduced to our “dynamic earth,” along with other planets, through lecture and laboratory topics including plate tectonics, evolution, earth materials, volcanoes, earthquakes, earth hazards, rivers and flooding, groundwater and pollution, glaciers and deserts, oceans, coasts, energy resources, and climate change. This course consists of three hours of lecture and a two-hour laboratory period each week. It satisfies general education area vi: natural science with laboratory. The overall goal of this course is to help students develop an understanding of how the earth works, how it influences everyone, and how individual choices influence the earth.

The course consists of both a lecture and a laboratory section, and the lab section is further broken down in a hands-on component and a place-based semester long project named “myplace.” The purpose of this project is to allow the students to choose a geographic location that has personal meaning, and apply the weekly earth science-related topics to their location as they are exposed to the information in lecture and lab. Their resulting project takes the form of an end-of-semester powerpoint presentation about the geology and human use of their meaningful place. This assignment is designed to get the student thinking about how geology applies to a special place and how the actions we humans take today will determine its future. It also provides a convenient way for the student to track their learning as they get to know their location geologically.

The success and development of this project will be presented to the conference to demonstate the advantage of using a place-based project for introductory students in geosciences at western michigan university.