Summit on the Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education Working Group 8
Friday
11:00 – 12:00
What content, comp, & skills are needed for geoscience careers?
Critical thinking and problem solving skills:
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Most important question: critical thinking (and what do we mean by this term), second = what
should curricula include?
How can you assess if a student has developed that skill (critical thinking and problem solving)?
Concept questions – not on 1st and 2nd level of blooms taxonomy
o Concept tests
o Think-pair-share
 Difficult to work within groups
o Collaborative learning
 Typically split jobs, or best students take the majority of the
 Give group quizzes and single quizzes
 Average these?
 Which is better
 One example. Give individual tests and then give out group test (group
of 4). You can give mc, tf, diagrams, and interpretations. Seems to work
well for most question types
 By allowing discussions the class becomes more enjoyable
o Peer evaluation
Scaffolding critical thinking
o within a course
o within the curriculum
 give them problems to solve
 become more complex as students move on to higher levels
 run activities first thing throughout the class
 groups mix up all the time
o actively problem solving in groups, using discussion
o follow up with class discussion
 in terms of community college
 many can’t afford the textbooks
 Example. First portion of the semester lecture, second portion of the semester
the students read the book and give a critically interpretive book report.
 Changed perspectives on life, what they thought about the book, should
this be recommended? Summarize book
 Examples of book types: sustainability
 Students end up liking the process in the end
o Does the interpretation make sense within the framework of the facts/data
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 Introduction into brain mapping (concepts maps and categorizing grids)
 The scaffolding must be in place to come to a final decision
 Metacognition – how students are learning
o Rule of 3 & 4s
 What skills do you really want them to have, decide as a department and then
use these skills in more courses than just one
 Take students on field trips twice – take them once in lower level class and then
again in upper level (or even in 2 upper level classes ex. Mineralogy and
structure)
o Today everyone has Google so we have many of the facts – but you must be able to use
the knowledge to answer questions
Impacts of Critical Thinking
o Geointution – geospecific critical thinking – what are the components of this?
o Why does this work, why is it there?
o Is this data valid, is the picture the truth,
o Is there enough data to accurately solve the problem
o How do we get valid data
o What is the next question?
o Does this question make sense within the geologic world and within the broader
geoscience world (ect, ect)
o Does the interpretation make sense within the framework of the facts/data
 Introduction into brainmapping (concepts maps and categorizing grids)
o Understand whats happening in greater world
 Ability to put things into context
 How do you assess with MC exam – they must think through the problem
o Active engagements active learning in class and then give exams at home
Other things to talk about:
o Definition of critical thinking within course, program, and department:
o Critical thinking must be learned over time through all classes and should snowball over
time
o Assessments must be authentic – did the students actually learn the material
 Departments must decide how to proceed
 Integrated within department, define what critical thinking is, define how
assessments work and over what time scale does this occur?
 Accountability – classroom visits are “touchy” for some educators
 Make changes on administrative level
 Effective peer review is difficult in terms of knowing the other
professors in the department
 Pre-tenure professors are highly supervised and checked by others, why
does it stop once a professor gets tenure?
o How to make students think like a scientist
 Geoscientist
 Scientist
 Citizen of the world
After Lunch:
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What should next generation undergraduate geoscience cirrucula include:
o Tracks vs breath?
o What is physical geology?
 Plate tectonics, rock types, minerals, earthquakes, environments
 Physical because doesn’t include deep time and history
 Some physical geology has more mathematics than non-major classes
o Which approach would you prefer: systems approach versus classic approach (physical
approach) or earth science?
 Systems is more integrative
 Gets people more excited, learn how to make observations at multiple
scales,
 Make connections to society
o Mineralogy – teach differently depending upon systems versus classic?
 No,
 Placed based learning may help students remember minerals ect
 Scale based learning is also important to learn in intro classes that will affect
mineralogical skills later
o Next generation: systems approach, transdisciplinarity – will work better throughout the
curriculum
Concepts:
o Earth science
o Rock cycle
o Earth materials
o Climate change
o Science in Society
 Why geology is important
o Plate Tectonics
o Surface Processes
o Deep Time & Evolution
o Oceanic
o Biogeochemical processes
Skills:
o GIS
o Critical thinking
o Group collaboration
o Reading comprehension
o Field skills
 Should required field methods with environmental emphasis or structure based
field camp
 Internships – alumni can be useful, department introduced internships
 Undergraduate research
Assessments:
o How to do this?
o Some schools have rubrics, others can be far more rigorous