To support student construction of knowledge during class meetings, there is a growing demand to incorporate active learning practices. However, 'active learning' can range from occasionally voting on a multiple-choice question, to spending all of class time on worksheets. Consequently, the outcomes of active learning course reforms vary widely.…

Spatial skills are embedded in all aspects of the geosciences. The teaching and learning of spatial skills has been a challenging, but vital, endeavor. To support student learning of spatial skills in undergraduate courses, we designed scaffolds for spatially dependent content in a mid-level geoscience course using playdough to allow students to…

In the Australian state of Victoria, the city of Melbourne endured the world's longest number of lockdown days, with severe government health orders and travel restrictions in place for extended periods of 2020 and 2021. In common with others, we found the provision of field teaching in introductory geology, structural geology, and volcanology,…

In an introductory geology course on vertebrate fossils, a new object-based classroom exercise was designed to enhance students' appreciation for evidence of evolution as a "tinkering" process, specifically in modern organisms with which everyone is familiar. During the dissection of a popular college late-night snack (barbeque-style…

In the past couple of decades, the geoscience education community has made great strides toward investigating how to provide effective student learning experiences in the college setting. While experiences such as student-centered teaching strategies and course design elements are useful for the instructor, they may not make important elements of…

This study examines the effects of an extended authentic research experience on students' understanding of the nature of science (NOS) and self-efficacy toward science. The curriculum of an introductory physical geology lab was transformed to include a six-week, student-driven research project focused on local groundwater and surface water issues.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of captioning on undergraduate students' learning within a typical classroom environment. Based on guidelines associated with Universal Design as well as limitations imposed by classroom acoustics and noise levels, it was hypothesized that captions would increase students' recall and…

A series of short (5 to 7 minutes long) geoscience videos were created to support student learning in a flipped class setting for an introductory geology class at North Carolina State University. Videos were made using a stylus, tablet, microphone, and video editing software. Essentially, we narrate a slide, sketch a diagram, or explain a figure…

Promoting collaboration and discourse in asynchronous online courses is challenging; students need something engaging to talk about, a communications medium in which to fluidly discuss it, and a social environment that supports discourse. We designed a fully online introductory geoscience lecture and lab course called Geology Goes Hollywood that…

This research examines a semester-long introductory environmental geology course, which emphasized climate science using an Earth systems approach and employed a multipronged teaching strategy comprising lecture, movie viewing, class dialogues, and journaling. Evidence of student engagement during various pedagogical approaches (e.g., movie…

People with disabilities are chronically underrepresented in many geoscience departments across the country. There are a number of proposed reasons why this under-representation persists, one of which is lack of instructor training in designing accessible curriculum and making high-quality accommodations. This not only puts students with…

We compare student learning and perception data from astronomy, physics, and geology courses taught in a traditional classroom with individual desks to the same classes taught in a large auditorium. In a large student sample (1,593 students), there is no clear difference between rooms in measures of failure rates or average final grades. However,…

Spatial thinking is often challenging for introductory geology students. A pilot study using the Augmented Reality sandbox (AR sandbox) suggests it can be a powerful tool for bridging the gap between two-dimensional (2D) representations and real landscapes, as well as enhancing the spatial thinking and modeling abilities of students. The AR…

Field note-taking skills are fundamental in the geosciences but are rarely explicitly taught. In a mixed-method study of an introductory geothermal field lesson, we characterize the content and perceptions of students' note-taking skills to derive the strategies that students use in the field. We collected several data sets: observations of the…

Most research about reformed teaching practices in the college science classroom is based on instructor self-report. This research describes what is happening in some introductory geology courses at multiple institutions across the country using external observers. These observations are quantified using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol…