INTEGRATING GEOSCIENCE CONTENT AND HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVES TO PROMOTE INCLUSION

To advance inclusion in the geosciences, undergraduate course instructors need to provide students with learning materials for viewing the discipline from multiple perspectives, including perspectives from cultures that are different from their own. In a course design and development project, our multi-institutional team is developing new courses using a framework that synthesizes elements of 21st century learning into three knowledge domains—foundational, meta-, and humanistic knowledge. The project goal is to increase student interest in science and self-efficacy for solving scientific problems. The team approached the course development using a collaborative process, where the courses were developed and implemented in successive semesters at three different institutions, with each new course building on the practical lessons learned during the previous implementation and through course evaluation data. The courses feature humanistic knowledge, which comprises ethics and emotions, cultural competency, and job/life skills, using case studies that were co-created by course instructors and a collaborating historian of science and medicine. The case studies emphasize the contributions of groups that have been historically marginalized, or forgotten, in science. For example, a course in sustainable watersheds explored the scientific knowledge of traditional and indigenous groups and how those groups applied, or currently apply, watershed science and management for provision of water and food. The watershed case studies span time, from the Mesoamerican prehistory of the Aztec civilization to the work of modern indigenous tribes that has resulted in legal personhood status for rivers and mountains. The final course assessment of student learning uses the digital storytelling software ArcGIS StoryMaps, which is a platform for students to demonstrate their foundational, meta-, and humanistic knowledge. Project evaluation data from the first course implementations suggest the design framework has the potential to increase student understanding of who has participated in, and/or who belongs in, the scientific enterprise.