TEACHING MASS EXTINCTIONS: EFFECTIVENESS OF A GALLERY WALK AS AN ACTIVE-LEARNING STRATEGY IN INTRODUCTORY GEOSCIENCE CLASSROOMS

Active-learning strategies have been shown to improve student learning outcomes in STEM disciplines. Little geoscience education research has been conducted on the effectiveness of gallery walks in improving student scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills along with content knowledge. A gallery walk is a team-based active learning strategy in which groups rotate between posters or other papers on the wall and answer questions in relation to scientific data plus the answers of previous groups. To mitigate this geoscience education research gap, we developed a gallery walk to teach mass extinctions in GenEd introductory geology courses. The students were given a pre-reading on one of the four mass extinctions, the Permian-Triassic, Cretaceous-Tertiary, Pleistocene and Anthropocene, as well as a pre-test to assess their basic knowledge of mass extinctions (how many, when, hypotheses for causes, evidence used by geoscientists, which species/groups perished, etc). The students were then split into groups of three to eight and stationed at the mass extinction their pre-reading covered, from which they proceeded through the gallery walk, touching on all four mass extinctions and interpreting data along the way. Our assessment of student scientific reasoning (ongoing and to be presented at the session) focuses on analyzing and interpreting actual data and explaining how data supports (or does not support) hypotheses. Once completed, the students were then given a post-test consisting of the same questions as the pre-test. These analyses will provide an assessment of gallery walks in developing student scientific thinking skills and content knowledge in the geosciences through this active-learning strategy. Preliminary data from one class implementation of the gallery walk suggests an increase in scientific reasoning and interpretation of the data provided, with an overall increase in the understanding of mass extinctions and their causes.