THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF ASSESSING LEARNING IN THE GEOSCIENCES (Invited Presentation)

Assessing student learning is essential in demonstrating whether instructional goals are met and understanding student progress, revealing student thinking, and adapting instruction to the needs of different student populations. The geoscience community has long focused on the challenges of assessing student learning. In 2004, the National Geoscience Faculty Survey (NGFS) revealed that over 85% of respondents used exams as the favored strategy for assessing student learning as compared to problem sets (52%), papers (46%), quizzes (44%), or portfolios (4%). In response to these data in 2005 the On the Cutting Edge program offered the Understanding What Our Geoscience Students Are Learning: Observing and Assessing workshop involving 42 faculty. The website page on assessment types that arose from the workshop remains one of the top ten pages on the SERC website with nearly 50,000 unique pageviews in 2020. Since that workshop the NGFS survey revealed a growth in the frequency of faculty reporting that they changed assessment tools or strategies in majors courses from 20% in 2009 to 37% in 2016 and with introductory course from 31% in 2009 to 42% in 2016. Similarly, a higher frequency of faculty reported communicating with colleagues about how to assess student learning from 43% in 2009 to 58% in 2016.

Since the 2004 NGFS findings, geoscience assessment has evolved from the prevalence of exams to employ strategies to assess students’ thinking, attitudes, and persistence. Assessing foundational knowledge has led to cultural-responsive changes in the Geoscience Concept Inventory and the development of Food-Energy-Water Nexus concept inventory. Common writing prompts have been used to assess students’ ability to solve interdisciplinary problems, systems thinking, and sense of place. Collaborations with social scientists have advanced assessment of students’ spatial reasoning and affect. Now as geoscience renews its focus on broadening participation, assessment can become a powerful tool in meeting the needs of different student populations. Recent geoscience studies have employed formative strategies to assess students’ sense of belonging, metacognition, and identity and summative strategies such as disaggregated outcomes data to clarify the complex factors that contribute to a more equitable classroom.