COMPARISON OF INQUIRY-BASED LAB ACTIVITIES IN INTRODUCTORY GEOSCIENCE LABS: DO STUDENTS LEARN BETTER WITH HANDS-ON LABS?

Laboratory activities provide opportunities to engage undergraduates in the "hands-on" portion of courses. We used the Teaching Beliefs Inventory (1) to ask teaching assistants (TAs) about teaching and learning in introductory geoscience courses including, "How do your students learn science best?" Of the 11 TAs interviewed, 61% indicated that hands-on activities (interacting with an artifact such as a rock or mineral) helped their students learn science. We then compared students’ learning in a maps-based plate tectonics (without artifacts, so not hands-on) and minerals (hands-on) lab activities during two semesters each, of labs in face-to-face (F2F) and online instructional formats. In F2F formats, average learning gains were higher for minerals (87.3%) compared to plate tectonics (14.4%), which is consistent with greater learning in labs where students interact with artifacts (hands-on). Student interest was also significantly higher for minerals (M= 3.4 on a 4-point scale) than plate tectonics (M=3.2) in the F2F format (p<.001). We have developed and are evaluating a plate tectonics lab that incorporates artifact-driven hands-on activities to measure if student learning gains are larger than the previous plate tectonics labs. The new hands-on Plate Tectonics lab features inquiry-driven activities in which students create models of plate tectonic boundaries using different materials. The model-driven labs are being tested in high school classrooms in spring 2023 and are adaptable for post-secondary lab sections. Our preliminary results suggest that students can benefit from the incorporation of hands-on, inquiry-based labs. (1) Luft & Roehrig, 2007