CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH AND LOW LEVELS OF INQUIRY IN INTRODUCTORY GEOSCIENCE LABS: A CASE STUDY OF ACTIVITIES USED IN COMMON LAB TOPICS

Inquiry-based lab activities offer students opportunities to engage in authentic geoscience learning experiences. We hosted a 2020 EER workshop in which instructors developed new inquiry-based introductory geology laboratory activities, which are now peer reviewed and published at https://serc.carleton.edu/inquiry_intro_geo/index.html. Using these and other instructor-created labs, we have studied student learning and interest in lab activities used in seven introductory geoscience courses at five US institutions. Activities within labs (e.g. sub-sections of labs) were coded for several topics commonly taught in introductory geology labs (Piper et al., 2022), which reveals that the level of inquiry ranges from confirmation to open inquiry even within a given topic. Levels of inquiry are determined based on the amount of the scientific process over which students have autonomy. If students are provided with instructions for how to conduct most steps of an activity, it is categorized as lower inquiry (confirmation, structured); if students have more decision-making opportunities, then the activity is at a higher level of inquiry (guided, open or authentic). Low inquiry lab activities (confirmation or structured) often ask students to follow a step-by-step list of prescribed procedures, while higher inquiry labs (guided or open) may still ask students to complete activities in which they follow procedures and make prescribed types of measurements, but also challenge students to make and test their own hypotheses, select ideal sites for investigation, describe interpretations, and identify sources of error that might impact their measurements. For example, confirmation level activities in Rocks and Minerals labs often ask students to match their observations with information on a chart to describe materials (e.g. clast size of sediment), but an authentic inquiry activity asks students to use hand sample characteristics to create a new rock classification scheme and discuss implications of the system in the context of other objects (fruits). In this presentation, we will share case studies of Rocks and Minerals, Maps, and Field Trip labs, showcasing features of high and low inquiry in each topical area.