Development of cost effective strategies for teaching, learning and assessing scientific reasoning abilities in large face-to-face and distance education general science courses

This project, designed to run from May 2016 through Dec 2018, aims to improve students’ abilities to apply scientific knowledge, data and reasoning to personal and societal decisions, a primary educational goal for a scientifically literate society.

In EOSC114,The Catastrophic Earth – taught annually to over 2000 face to face (f2f) and distance education (DE) students – we will re-configure existing content within a natural hazards risk- assessment framework and build corresponding learning activities and assessments for both the f2f and DE settings.

Learning activities will explicitly address student motivation and will include practice with scientific thinking, opportunities for student choice, and a real or virtual field experience.

Students will work creatively and collaboratively towards making contributions every term to a permanent collection of course resources. Assessments of thinking skills, attitudes and knowledge will be developed to support learning and evaluate students’ learning gains.

We will also characterize the efficiency, sustainability and transferability of these teaching, learning and assessment strategies. The first interm report (following 6mths of this 36 mth project) can be seen here.

Grading is probably everyone’s least favorite part of teaching. See the EOAS-SEI Times menu for Times Vol 10.2, a 2-pager outlining four evidence-based ways to make the process less stressful at the same time as ensuring the exams promote student learning.