CLASSROOMS WITH IMPACT: LEVERAGING COMMUNITY ENGAGED LEARNING IN GEOSCIENCES COURSES

Community engaged learning (CEL) offers an opportunity to connect geoscience course content with a community need and demonstrate content relevance for students. The community partner choice is crucial for proper course objective alignment and project effectiveness. Within on-campus courses (N=2), community partners included school districts, informal conservation groups, and county museums, while online courses (N=2) involved a fossil park and a web-based educational resource as community partners. Through course CEL projects, students proposed solutions to protect biodiversity and/or developed public informal educational resources. In 2018, students self-reported that they enjoyed CEL since the process made them stakeholders in modern issues and provided real-world, hands-on interdisciplinary experiences.

In the Spring 2020 pandemic semester, both an on-campus and online course completed their CEL projects virtually. While the majority (~88%) of students in both 2020 courses (N = 11, 23) affirmed the value of CEL in geoscience courses, the results were less positive than previous semesters. Students noted CEL’s advantages of critical thinking, meaningful learning, and real-world solutions, while opponents reported a large CEL time commitment and the partner’s responsibility to “do the work themselves.” Whether the pandemic affected student perceptions of CEL is yet to be determined. Regardless, some students declared they would continue to work with their CEL partner beyond the course and involve more individuals in the shared goal. While CEL exposes students to community stewardship and provides opportunities to engage in local problem-solving with community stakeholders, it necessitates that instructors streamline geoscience course content since effective CEL requires course time and should be integrated instead of an “add-on” to the regular curriculum.