ASSESSING STUDENT UNDERSTANDING IN AN ENVIRONMENTAL GEOSCIENCE CLASS

The Environmental Geoscience course at Central Connecticut State University simultaneously serves two populations, registered and potential geology and earth science majors as well as students seeking to fulfill a general education science requirement. The course is offered as an alternative to the standard Physical Geology course, and Fall 2015 marks only the third semester that the course has been offered. Special assessments conducted this semester focused on examining students’ basic understanding of the environment and how they retain information acquired in the class lectures. The assessment consisted of a 20 multiple choice test consisting of questions taken from the instructor’s test bank. The test was administered at three points during the semester: a pretest administered on the first day of class (to measure initial understanding of major concepts to be covered in the course), the second after six weeks of lectures (as a measure of mastery of the material at a point in the semester just before an announced exam), and the third a few weeks after the second (an announced mandatory “retake” that gave the students a chance to improve their scores). This poster will explain the results of the study, including which particular concepts the students as a whole had the greatest difficulty with, as well as various student behaviors that this study illustrated (relating to exam preparation and extra credit incentives).