Quantifying the Level of Inquiry in a Reformed Introductory Geology Lab Course

Abstract

As part of a campus-wide effort to transform introductory science courses to be more engaging and more accurately convey the excitement of discovery in science, the curriculum of an introductory physical geology lab course was redesigned. What had been a series of "cookbook" lab activities was transformed into a sequence of activities based on scientific inquiry and cooperative learning. The first two semesters were spent developing and implementing the new lab activities, and two more semesters were spent refining them. In the second semester of each of these two phases, students enrolled in the lab completed a 15-question version of the Geoscience Concept Inventory (GCI; Libarkin and Anderson, 2005); there were significant improvements from pretest to posttest scores. Student evaluations before and after the reform are not significantly different and overall positive. This paper presents an overview of the lab activities in the new curriculum, a detailed analysis of the type and level of inquiry in each lab, and the assessment of the impact on student learning. Keywords inquiry, introductory geology lab Disciplines Curriculum and Instruction | Earth Sciences | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Educational Methods CommentsThis article is published as Moss, Elizabeth, and Cinzia Cervato. "Quantifying the level of inquiry in a reformed introductory geology lab course. ABSTRACTAs part of a campus-wide effort to transform introductory science courses to be more engaging and more accurately convey the excitement of discovery in science, the curriculum of an introductory physical geology lab course was redesigned. What had been a series of ''cookbook'' lab activities was transformed into a sequence of activities based on scientific inquiry and cooperative learning. The first two semesters were spent developing and implementing the new lab activities, and two more semesters were spent refining them. In the second semester of each of these two phases, students enrolled in the lab completed a 15-question version of the Geoscience Concept Inventory (GCI; Libarkin and Anderson, 2005); there were significant improvements from pretest to posttest scores. Student evaluations before and after the reform are not significantly different and overall positive. This paper presents an overview of the lab activities in the new curriculum, a detailed analysis of the type and level of inquiry in each lab, and the assessment of the impact on student learning. Ó

Student and Faculty Views on Process of Science Skills at a Large, Research-Intensive University

“…Also, large-enrollment courses have recruited greater numbers of peer mentors or undergraduate learning assistants. This serves two purposes: providing the peer mentoring experiences that students view as important and helping students in large-enrollment courses to learn and practice POS skills (Cervato, Gallus, Slade, Kawaler, & Marengo, 2015;Elliott et al, 2016;Moss & Cervato, 2016). This recognizes both the pedagogical advantages to learning POS skills of this approach and the importance that students place on these experiences in learning POS skills.…”

Authentic research in an introductory geology laboratory and student reflections: Impact on nature of science understanding and science self-efficacy

“…Drawing from these successful models, the curriculum of Geology 100L was transformed to include an extended authentic research experience through a six-week research project supported by additional inquiry lab activities (Moss and Cervato, 2016).…”

“…During the following two lab periods, groups expanded on this initial exploration, and explored their initial research questions during a 'mini project'. They did this by developing a conceptual understanding of groundwater flow and hydrology using an 'ant farm' model (a cross-section of an aquifer with a series of wells where students can inject dye to simulate point contamination) and a stream table to explore and model the evolution of a stream system (Moss and Cervato, 2016).…”

“…Moreover, the "traditional" hands-on labs with limited or no student inquiry were modified to increase the role of student inquiry. More detail on the content and level of inquiry in the labs supporting the research project can be found in Moss and Cervato (2016). The phases of the research project are described in the electronic appendix, which includes also the assessment instruments.…”

“…For example, after students explored the relationships between plate boundaries, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. as a part of the Plate Tectonics lab (Moss and Cervato, 2016), they were asked: "Think about the overlapping boundaries of two plates that you just worked on (e.g., where the North American and Pacific plate meet). Did each group of students classify these boundaries the same way?…”