CHANGING STUDENTS’ GEOLOGIC WORLDVIEWS: BOARD MEETINGS, ARGUMENTATION, DEMOS, AND VR

In a general education geoscience course, engaging non-science majors or student unfamiliar with geology entirely, can be a formidable task. Students may arrive in class with a lack of interest, perceived understanding, lack of confidence in their science ability, and inability to see the relevance geology has to their personal lives and society as a whole. As geoscience educators, we need to meet their expectations and needs in our instruction and curriculum by challenging our introductory students to demonstrate higher order critical thinking as it relates to the content, skills, and applications we teach. Active engagement via “board meetings” is one strategy to change instructional mode, promote collaborative work environments, and have students apply and practice their content knowledge in a low-stakes environment. Converting standard labs into problem-based learning scenarios and providing students opportunity to engage in claim-evidence-reasoning and argumentation enables students to practice the actual skills of professional geoscientists and relate content to socio-scientific issues. Finally, the visual nature of geology with its unique spatial and temporal scales demands an important role for hands-on demonstrations to model geologic concepts and processes. These demos, along with narrated virtual field trips to geologic significant locations on Google Earth, are provided as video resources, and used as formative assessments. Pilot study results indicate that their usage can increase understanding of geologic concepts and processes, and promote improved attitude and confidence. These strategies can give students a new lens of appreciation with which they view geology and science.