PROMOTING INTEREST IN THE GEOSCIENCES THROUGH CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND A SOCIAL MEDIA APP

Civic engagement (CE) is common in college mission statements. It involves many dimensions, the totality of which may be challenging to teach (and learn) comprehensively in a single semester or course. Among the learning outcomes that comprise the whole of CE, some are appropriate for geoscience courses. This project approaches the challenge of increasing student interest in geoscience through two CE learning outcomes (as defined in the AAC&U literature): civic identity and civic life.

One two-year college introductory geoscience class and one university pre-service science teaching methods class collaborated in a CE project. We used the concepts of civic identity and civic life to help students recognize the individual and collective roles they play in potentially mitigating climate change. The methods involved the StoryCorps app used on student mobile devices. Students worked together in cross-campus teams to compose a menu of interview questions to elicit stories, perceptions, opinions, and attitudes about the global climate crisis. They then used those questions on the app to record interviews with others both in, and outside of, their groups. Finally, they reflected on their experience in an end-of semester seminar.

The stages of the project included forming intercampus teams; introductory meetings and planning; composing and vetting questions; conducting interviews; and assessing learning. In addition to our measured gains in civic awareness and geoscience interest, others were: 1) increased awareness of the diversity of perspectives surrounding the climate change issue that may help future science teachers better foster scientific literacy in their students; 2) the introductory geoscience students gained a better understanding of societal attitudes toward the climate crisis, through the hearing of individual stories; and 3) that the overall experience drove students’ behavioral intentions towards the climate challenge.