In this integrative, team-based capstone project, students in an upper year Tectonics course built a planet of their own design from the basic concepts of plate tectonics. They created a tectonic map complete with plate boundaries, continental-ocean boundaries, motion vectors, and hot spot traces. In subsequent weeks, students produced a geologic…

We present a quantitative study of responses to voluntary and anonymous surveys of undergraduate geology students enrolled at an English-medium, research university in South Africa. This research captured student interest in geology, their perceived level of understanding of key geological concepts, and the extent to which in-class and in-field…

Understanding plate tectonics is pivotal to development of an integrated understanding of Geoscience topics. However, geology is frequently introduced to students in lower secondary school by describing separate processes, such as sedimentary rock formation, rather than investigating the overall driving forces for change. This study investigated…

It is important to question the generalizability of the knowledge about the nature of science (NOS), and thus know whether the knowledge about NOS can be transferred to various contexts. As such, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether students were able to transfer their acquired NOS understandings into contexts that vary in their…

When dealing with complex conceptual systems, low-prior- knowledge learners develop fragmentary and incorrect understanding. To learn complex topics deeply, these learners have to (a) monitor understanding to detect flaws and (b) generate explanations to revise and repair the flaws. In this research we explored if the detection of a flaw in…

This experiment investigated whether study of a scientific text and a visual display that contained redundant text segments would affect memory and transfer. The authors randomly assigned 42 students from a university in the southwestern United States in equal numbers to 1 of 2 conditions: (a) a redundant condition, in which participants studied a…

Should instructors assume that students possess conceptual knowledge of plate tectonics when they reach a second college geoscience course? Five cohorts in a historical geology course over 5 y--a total of 149 students--completed an in-class assignment in which they drew sketches of plate boundaries with required annotations. Analysis of the…

Despite the potential advantages of instructional explanations, evidence indicates that they are usually ineffective. Subsequent work has shown that in order to make instructional explanations effective indeed, one successful strategy is to combine them with indications of the limitations in learners' understanding that they are intended to…

The goal of this study is to identify Thai students' prior knowledge about particle motion when P-waves arrive. This existing idea significantly influences what and how students learn in the classroom. The data were collected via conceptual open-ended questions designed by the researchers and through explanatory follow-up interviews. Participants…