COMBINING ACTIVE LEARNING AND PODCASTING AS AN OUTREACH MEDIUM TO MAKE SCIENCE RELEVANT TO BOTH UNDERGRADUATE NON-MAJORS AND THE PUBLIC (Invited Presentation)

Geoscience classes are commonly taken by non-science majors to fulfill university requirements for general education science credits. By making these electives more relevant and teaching them in a flipped classroom format, student can come away from the class with a better appreciation of science and we can create citizen scientists for life. The introductory class “Native Sciences and Earth Systems” fulfills the general education requirement of science with a laboratory component at the University of Oklahoma. This class seeks to meld ideas from western science that are commonly taught in university science curriculum with indigenous people’s stories and histories of geological and meteorological events from around the world.

Native Science is taught as a “flipped” or “active learning” class in a technology enhanced classroom so that student’s interests steer much of the content of the class. This not only makes the material more relevant to the students but it increases their ability to retain the science concepts that they are exploring. By framing geology and meteorology concepts as stories and using artwork from indigenous cultures, the geoscience processes are more easily understood and science becomes something that is relevant to the student, instead of an abstract concept that exists only in a laboratory. The class consists of field trips to the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art to explore the extensive Native American art collections, both modern and historical. The class also takes field trips to the Arbuckle Mountains, which are a natural laboratory where they see in the field concepts such as unconformities, orogenic processes, and hydrology.

Concepts from this class have recently been incorporated into a geoscience podcast (Don’t Panic Geocast), that has listeners from around the world. Feedback from the mostly non-scientist listeners has reinforced what has been learned from the class: framing western science concepts as indigenous people have through art and stories makes science more relevant to citizens.