ASSESSING WATER LITERACY: CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING WITH DIAGRAMS IN INTRODUCTORY GEOLOGY COURSES

Undergraduate students enrolled in introductory geology courses enter the classroom with a range of conceptions about surface water and groundwater. Water literacy is important for students to develop a solid conceptual understanding so that they can become knowledgeable global citizens. To explore students’ conceptual understanding, we gathered student responses in ten sections of introduction geology courses for non-science majors at two large, research intensive universities (N=513). Students answered open-ended questions about aquifers, groundwater pollution, wells, river erosion, and river velocity at the start of the semester administered through a classroom response system by clicking on their Smart device screens. To analyze students’ responses, we plotted the coordinates of their responses using ArcGIS and identified polygonal regions of common answers based on the diagram structure, natural groupings of response patterns, and geologic relevance. The groundwater questions revealed students are unable to identify an unconfined aquifer and are unaware of lateral water flow underground. The majority of students believed that pollution released from a septic tank would travel directly below the tank (33%), instead of following local groundwater flow. After revising this question’s prompt, 32% of students selected the correct area of the diagram. When the students were asked a similar question with wells depicted, a majority of students correctly understood which well would be contaminated (66%). Students prompted with a plan view diagram of a river bend indicated the most erosion would occur on the inner bank of the bend (44%). When the prompt was changed to direct the students to think about the bed of the channel, instead of the channel sides, the majority of students (46%) clicked on the outer bank, the correct answer. These findings conflicted with students’ aggregated responses about river velocity being greatest in the middle of a river bend (38%). Students’ answers to questions involving straight river channels were more consistent with scientific models. Our results indicate that students’ lack strong scientific conceptions of groundwater and surface water, and that the type of diagram and question prompt can impact a student’s interpretations.