DIAMOND PROPOSALS OF A DIFFERENT SORT: USING BACKWARDS DESIGN AND ACTIVE LEARNING TECHNIQUES TO TEACH UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS HOW TO FIND DIAMONDS

The popular BYU General Education course “Diamonds and Gems” is taught to non-major undergraduate students. More than 95% of the students are non-science majors, and informal polling at the beginning of each semester reveals that most are wary of college-level science courses.

Using science-informed pedological techniques such as backward design, active learning, and guided inquiry, the first unit of class focuses on diamonds, and where to find them. This multi-day unit is designed not only to teach the students scientific principles, but also to encourage them to believe that they can succeed in a science class. A (truncated) portion of the lesson will be shown.

Students are guided through lectures, readings, and activities into creating an investor proposal to find diamonds in northern Canada. Using South Africa as an example, the students learn to decipher seismic velocity profiles, connect the age of the basement rock to the probability of finding diamondiferous kimberlite pipes, and understand the role the lithospheric mantle plays in diamond formation. In small groups, they recreate “Clifford’s Rule,” which states that economically viable kimberlites occur on Archean cratons (Clifford, 1966). Using this information, the students then write up a two-page proposal, asking “investors” to provide the money needed to prospect for diamonds in a specific area of Canada, which the students have chosen and justify based on the scientific principles they have learned.