Learning in asynchronous online environments has gained importance over the last several decades, and educational environment shifts from the COVID-19 pandemic appear to have increased this need. Science educators and students need information about which approaches work in the asynchronous environment where informal feedback tends to be reduced,…

This study reports on a case study-based curricular intervention designed to help undergraduate engineering students make connections between geoscience and its applications. Teaching through case studies resulted in a measurable and significant improvement in the confidence that students had in their ability to apply geoscience concepts in an…

A class exercise was designed for a college-level geochemistry class to promote inquiry and student participation. In this exercise, real soil data available online was analyzed to evaluate geochemical associations among different soil orders and as a screening tool for anthropogenic metal contamination. Students were asked to read a peer-reviewed…

Laboratory sections of university Earth science courses provide hands-on, inquiry-based activities for students in support of lecture and discussion. Here, I compare student conceptual knowledge outcomes of laboratory sections by administering an independent concept inventory at the beginning and end of two courses: one that had a lecture and a…

The paradigm of geologic time is built on complex concepts, and students master it in multiple steps. Concepts in Geology is an inquiry-based geology class for preservice teachers at Wright State University. The instructors used the Geoscience Concept Inventory (GCI) to determine if students' understanding of key ideas about geologic time and…

Although active learning methodologies have been implemented in geoscience classes successfully, no direct comparison between these different instructional techniques exists to date. For that reason, the purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness in student learning of two active learning methods: peer instruction and lecture…