BRINGING THE FOCUS TO UNIVERSAL SKILLS IN A GEOLOGY FIELD COURSE

Although field experiences plainly increase students’ learning and retention of subject-specific skills (e.g., geology), they also play a key role in developing more “universal” or “transferable” skills. Unfortunately, students do not often recognize that these universal skills are (1) being developed and (2) valued by employers just as much as - if not more than - subject specific skills. Using the UFERN framework with a focus on student context factors, we have begun to make incremental changes to the summer field course at California State University Long Beach (CSULB), to increase the emphasis on universal skills and guide students to become confident self-advocates. Course additions include: (i) dedicated time to think and reflect on skill development (journaling); (ii) “fire-side chats” to discuss topics like graduate school, industry jobs, and preparation of application materials; (iii) oral presentations in the field; and (iv) a final project requiring students to write a cover letter. Students rated their confidence in various geologic, scientific, and universal skills in pre-/post-field surveys using likert scaled items and, in the post-field survey, identified course activities that they felt supported the development of these skills. The final written cover letter assignments were analyzed to determine if and how students’ self-advocate. Results from 48 participants over four years show that, of the three categories, students are least confident in their ability to perform general scientific skills, and that their self-reported confidence in general scientific skills and universal skills increases after taking the course. Data from the first three years showed that there was a disconnect between student confidence in skills and how they expressed that in job application materials like cover letters. In year four, the instructors changed the way the journaling and scaffolding of the cover letter assignment was introduced and there appears to be a noticeable change in student self-advocation. We are heartened that such minor changes, which do not change the geologic content taught in a course, and do not add significant workload to students or instructors, can show such promising results. We encourage an increasing emphasis on the employer-desired scientific and universal skills in field classes, where opportunities to develop such skills are ubiquitous.