Designing a Course in Geophysics

1. Teaching Geophysics in the 21st Century Designing a Course in Geophysics

2. Teaching Geophysics in the 21st Century • Teaching is commonly viewed as being teacher-centered. • Reinforced by the teaching evaluation process • Commonly reinforced by how we phrase course goals: “I want to expose my students to….” or “I want to teach my students that…” or “I want to show students that…”

3. Teaching Geophysics in the 21st Century • “It dawned on me about two weeks into the first year that it was not teaching that was taking place in the classroom, but learning.” Pop star Sting, reflecting upon his early career as a teacher

4. Teaching Geophysics in the 21st Century • We can’t do a student’s learning for him/her • Exposure does not guarantee learning • Students learn when they are actively engaged in practice, application, and problem-solving (NRC How People Learn).

5. Teaching Geophysics in the 21st Century • If we are trying to decide what we want to accomplish in a course, shouldn’t we be asking what we want the students to be able to do as a results of having completed the course, rather than what the instructor will expose them to?

6. Teaching Geophysics in the 21st Century • Could start by trying to develop list of topics that should be included in a geophysics course. • Misses the real point of a course • Focus should not be on exposing students to topics. • Focus should be on developing students’ abilities to tackle problems in geophysics

7. Teaching Geophysics in the 21st Century • Example from a structural geo course • Course focused on covered of the major topics in structural geology Vs. • Course focused on enabling students to make observations of rocks and thin sections and collect field data to evaluate the conditions of deformation and the deformation mechanisms responsible for structures and fabrics and, where possible, the history of deformation in a sequence of rocks.

8. Setting goals • Your course should enable your students, at appropriate level, to do what you do in your discipline, not just expose them to what you know. • Start by answering the question “What do I want my students to be able to do when they are done with my course?”

9. Goals involving lowerorder thinking skills • Knowledge, comprehension, application list identify recognize explain describe paraphrase calculate know about prepare

10. Examples of goals involving lower order thinking skills • At the end of this course, I want students to be able to: • List the periods of the geologic time scale • Identify common rocks and minerals • Know where various plate boundaries are in the world • Calculate plate spreading rates • Recognize erosional and depositional glacial landforms on a topographic map

11. Examples of goals involving lower order thinking skills • At the end of this course, I want students to be able to: • Know about the role of phase changes in the seismic velocity profile of the mantle • Cite examples of poor land use practice in areas of geologic hazards • Explain how geologists use radioactive decay of elements to determine the ages of rocks. • Describe how to determine earthquake focal depth

12. Goals involving higherorder thinking skills • Analysis, synthesis, evaluation, some types of application derive design formulate predict interpret evaluate analyze synthesize create

13. Examples of goals involving higher order thinking skills • At the end of this course, I want students to be able to: • Interpret unfamiliar geologic maps and construct cross sections • Analyze the modern geologic processes in an unfamiliar area and assess potential hazards to humans (different from recalling those presented in class) • Use data from recent Mars missions to re-evaluate pre-2004 hypotheses about Mars geologic processes and history/evolution

14. Examples of goals involving higher order thinking skills • At the end of this course, I want students to be able to: • Make an informed decision about a controversial topic, other than those covered in class, involving hydrogeologic issues. • Collect and analyze data in order to ___ • Design a field exploration project of ___ • Solve unfamiliar problems in ____ • Find and evaluate information/data on ____ • Predict the outcome of ____

15. Goals involving lower order thinking skills are imbedded in ones involving higher order thinking skills “being able to interpret tectonic settings based on information on physiography, seismicity, and volcanic activity” has imbedded in it many goals involving lower order thinking skills

16. Why are the goals important? If you want students to be good at something, they must practice; therefore goals drive both course design and assessment

17. Task: Set one or two goals for a geophysics course • Set goals for the students, not the professor • Start with “Students will be able to…” • Don’t use “I want to expose students to…” or “I want to show students that…” • Set higher-order thinking skills goals • Use verbs such as interpret, solve, predict, analyze, synthesize, construct, design, evaluate, formulate (higher order thinking skills) • Avoid identify, classify, recognize, describe, calculate, list, explain, know about, have a strong background in (lower order thinking skills)

18. Task: Set one or two goals for a geophysics course • Avoid goals that are abstract and difficult to assess, e.g., • Students will understand plate tectonics • Students will think like scientists • Students will appreciate the complexity of Earth systems

19. Task: Set one or two goals for a geophysics course • Student-focused! • Higher order thinking skills! • Concrete and assessable!

20. Goals to coursevia content • What general content topics could provide students background and practicein the tasks related to the goal? • Different approach than starting with a laundry list of topics to cover.

21. Goals to course via content • Goal: students will be able to make observations of rocks and thin sections and collect field data to evaluate the conditions of deformation and the deformation mechanisms responsible for structures and fabrics and, where possible, the history of deformation in a sequence of rocks. • Content to achieve goal: three case studies 1) brittle deformation features in rocks of Capitol Reef National Monument, 2) brittle and ductile deformation features of the Tethyan fold and thrust belt and the Gurla Mandhata metamorphic core complex in southwestern Tibet, and 3) a final, wrap-up case study with field trip in Precambrian and Lower Paleozoic deformed rocks northeast of Albany, NY.

22. Goals to coursevia content • Goal: students will be able to use data from recent Mars missions (Mars Express, Mars Exploration Rovers, and MOC and THEMIS images from the past year) to re-evaluate pre-2004 hypotheses about Mars geologic processes and geologic evolution. • Possible content topics to achieve the goals: 1) the origin of drainage networks on Mars, 2) the extent of intermediate to silicic rocks on Mars, and 3) the origin of layered rocks on Mars.

23. Cutting Edge CourseDesign Tutorial • http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial.html

24. Example from ageo hazards course • Overarching goal: students will be able to research and evaluate news reports of a natural disaster and communicate their analyses to someone else

25. Be able to research and evaluate news reports of a natural disaster and communicate analyses to someone else • Instructor #1 chose four specific disasters as content topics • 1973 Susquehanna flood • Landsliding in coastal California • Mt. St. Helens • Armenia earthquake

26. Be able to research and evaluate news reports of a natural disaster and communicate analyses to someone else • Instructor #2 chose four themes as content topics • Impact of hurricanes on building codes and insurance • Perception and reality of fire damage on the environment • Mitigating the effects of volcanic eruptions • Geologic and sociologic realities of earthquake prediction

27. Be able to research and evaluate news reports of a natural disaster and communicate analyses to someone else • Instructor #3 chose to focus on a historical survey of natural disasters in Vermont • Historical record of flooding in NW Vermont • 1983 landsliding • 2-3 other places in Vermont that have had natural disasters of different types.

28. Goals and content topics unite to provide course framework • Previous example • Single goal • Different content topics mean that each course will be different. • Choice of content topics drives how the instructor will accomplish the goal. • Students will receive different kinds of practice during the course even though the overall goal is the same

29. Goals and content topics unite to provide course framework • How about a different goal for the same hazards course? • Students should be able to evaluate and predict the influence of climate, hydrology, biology, and geology on the severity of a natural disaster. • Could we use the same content topics? Yes! • How would the courses be different? In the activities developed to accomplish the goals and the type of practice students receive!!

30. Fleshing out content topics • Geology and Development of Modern Africa • Not a “Geology of Africa” course • Overarching goal: students should be able to analyze the underlying influence of geology on human events

31. Fleshing out content topics • Context is Africa, although goal is more general • Content topic #1: influence of climate change on prehistoric settlement patterns in North Africa • Geologic content knowledge: 14C dating, fossils, lacustrine sedimentation, stratigraphic columns, using sedimentary rocks to interpret paleoenvironments, geologic time scale,….

32. Fleshing out content topics • Content topic #2: influence of development of East African Rift on hominid evolution • Geologic content knowledge: formation and evolution of continental rifts, radiometirc dating, rift volcanisms, stratigraphic columns, fossils, using sedimentary rocks to interpret paleoenvironments, geologic time scale, fluvial and alluvial processes, faulting, geologic history of East Africa, evolution

33. Content coverage • Progression through content topics tends to be profoundly non-linear • Students learn what they need to know at any one time and re-visit content topics in increasing depth and breadth throughout the course.

34. Content coverage • Do students need to know everything there is to know about each topic before they can do anything?? Nope! • Do students learn everything there is to know about each topic?? Nope! • Are either of these bad things? Nope! • Depth in context of the goal vs. breadth in context of list of content items

35. Achieving course goals through selecting content topics • List your overarching goal(s). • For each, list possible content topics that you could use to reach that goal. • For each content topic, begin a list of content knowledge that students must master to achieve the goal using that topic.

36. Designing assignments/activities • For each overarching goal, how will you lead students to the point where they can do ____ on their own? • Alternative phrasing: how will you give students practice in doing ____?

37. Importance of having a teaching toolbox • If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. • Same goes for teaching. If the only tool in your teaching toolbox is lecturing, then….

38. Importance of having a teaching toolbox • Learn about successful student-active assignment/activity strategies • think-pair-share, jigsaw, discussion, simulations, role-playing, concept mapping, concept sketches, debates, long-term projects, research-like experiences…. • assignments involving writing, poster, oral presentation, service learning…. • Make deliberate choices of the best strategy for the task.

39. Assessment • What students receive grades on must be tasks that allow you to evaluate whether students have met the course goals • Don’t assess what is easily measured – assess what you value.

40. Setting goals • Example from an art history course • Survey of art from a particular time period Vs. • Enabling students to evaluate an unfamiliar work in its historical context or reconstruct an unfamiliar historical event from different viewpoints or a familiar historical event from a new viewpoint or seek out and evaluate information about an unfamiliar historical event

41. Assessment • If students are graded largely on their abilities to recall, define, recognize, and follow cook-book steps, you have not evaluated their progress toward goals involving higher order thinking skills.

42. How well does thisprocess work? • Goals-setting is hard but worth the effort • Once the goals are set (provided that they are specific, measurable, higher order thinking skills goals), the course and the assessment “falls together”

43. How well does thisprocess work? • Authentic assessment is easy to integrate if goals are kept in mind • Workshop participants’ ideas about course design are completely transformed. • Participants report applying the same design principles to other courses and to department curricula.

44. An aside on terminology • Design model is goals-focused • Terminology: goals vs. objectives vs. outcomes vs. learning goals vs. learning objectives vs. learning outcomes • Geology faculty at our workshops largely not fluent in edu-speak • Some have encountered terms defined differently in different venues • Our workshop participants wasted time and energy coping with the distinctions

45. An aside on terminology • The problem with the word “learning” • The brown bread example brown bread brown bread brown bread

46. An aside on terminology • The problem with the word “learning” • “I am in the middle of learning research techniques in geomicrobiology.” • “I am finding out more about learning research in the geosciences.” • Ditto learning objectives and learning outcomes

47. An aside on terminology • For our workshops, we collapsed goals, objectives and outcomes into one standard English term “goals”. • Goals for us will be concrete and measurable (“My goal in life is to make a million $$”; “My goal next year is to make the Olympic sock wrestling team.”) • Avoided “learning” as an adjective.

48. Step I: Context and audience • Our course design process begins with answering the following: • who are my students? • what do they need? • what are the constraints and support structure?

49. What’s missing?? • articulation of what your students need • articulation of goals beyond content/coverage goals • deliberate consideration of strategies to achieve goals beyond content goals • plan for evaluation of success

50. An alternativegoals-based approach • Brings same kind of introspection, intellectual rigor, systematic documentation, and evaluation to teaching that each of us brings to our research • Really shakes the tree and designs the course from the bottom up • Assessment falls out naturally