PATTERNS OF STUDENT INTEREST AND ENGAGEMENT IN INTRODUCTORY GEOLOGY LABS: A GUIDE TOWARDS LAB IMPROVEMENT

Introductory geology courses serve as opportunities to influence student interest and major choice. Students enroll for many reasons, including prior interest, general education requirements, and perceived difficulty. Intro labs and the TAs who often teach them play a key role in developing geology understanding and interest. These labs vary in content and style, typically to suit the needs of the program or the lecture instructor. Student input is valuable to when deciding where energy should be invested to revise labs.

We developed an easy to administer, 8-question lab survey in Fall 2024. Questions targeted student perceptions in terms of interest, impact on understanding, relevance, difficulty, and hands-on and authentic scientific engagement. Ratings were provided using 5-point Likert items, e.g. not at all to very interesting. Over 12 labs, we collected 1,505 responses (x̄ = 125), with a range of 33 (climate change) to 178 (scientific method & density). Surveys were optional, so may be biased towards certain groups of students. The labs are traditional in nature. They include a four-week series on minerals and rocks, a field trip to a local stream, and a series of one-off labs on common introductory topics (e.g. earthquakes, plate tectonics).

The most highly rated labs consistently were those on streams (field trip), climate change, and minerals. The highest average rating was for the level of hands-on engagement, followed by engagement in authentic scientific processes and impact on understanding. Relationships were found between some variables; most notably, hands-on engagement correlated with interest, impact, and authentic scientific engagement at small to medium effect sizes. Small effect sizes for relationships were also identified between impact and interest, impact and authentic engagement, and difficulty and relevance. The highest levels of hands-on engagement was reported for streams (field trip) and minerals. Across the four mineral and rock labs, interest, relevance, and hands-on engagement all steadily decreased over time, despite the labs having a similar format; meanwhile, impact on understanding stayed relatively constant and difficulty generally increased. Results of these surveys are being used to inform iterative improvements to labs and engage students in the revision process.