Guest post by K. Dunnett: “Inquiry for Geology”

Yay, another guest post by Kirsty! Here we go:

Papers with ‘Inquiry’ and ‘Laboratory’ always catch my eye. The majority of papers that I have read on this topic are in physics, the discipline that forms my background; biology and chemistry laboratory work carries safety and skills prerequisites that place restrictions on the level of openness that can safely be incorporated into introductory work. But geology (geosciences) may not, though the discussion is very much dominated by the role and advantages of fieldwork, despite its potentially exclusionary nature.

This paper considers ‘introductory physical geology laboratory classes’ and how the tasks that students completed were developed from highly-scripted, largely ‘confirmation’ activities to much more open activities that required students to engage more critically and independently with their practical work [1]. While the context is specific to the course structure, the process of examining practical activities through the framework by Buck et al. [2] can be applied quite generally. Although the paper describes activities as occurring in a ‘laboratory’, it appears that many of the activities could be adapted to a classroom setting.

For example, the rock and mineral laboratory exercises focussed on identifying samples by examining specific physical properties and then following an identification flowchart to name each sample. This was highly structured. The replacement mineral-identification activities required students to design the experimental procedures, analyse and communicate results and finally identify the minerals. Instead of identifying all minerals, each student was assigned a subset before joining a group of 2-4 other students who had also been assigned those samples; the group came to an agreement about the identity of the samples, and individuals reported this to students from other groups.

The igneous rocks were moved from being part of the mineral-identification activity to that covering sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. In the new format, small groups of students were tasked to identify characteristics of an unclassified collection of rock samples that could be used as a basis of an identification key, determining whether the rocks were igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary. Keys and sample sets were traded between groups to test the classification system. Although this activity was performed in a laboratory environment, it seems amenable to an active-learning classroom.

Student performance in subsequent classification tests, including of harder-to-classify rock types, was significantly improved in the revised activities. Moreover, there was also improvement in the midterm exam, despite students identifying half the number of samples than they had in the previous version of the activities.

Another activity was about geological time. Geological timescales are long, extremely long compared to a human life, and cause many students difficulties, while also being critical to geology as a discipline [3]. The geologic time laboratory part covered three aspects: the Earth’s history (4.6 billion years = 14 m; dated events added to), relative dating (no details given) and absolute dating (no details given).

The revised activity on the Earth’s history retained the 14 m long time line, but each student was given undated events and tasked to place it on the time line without any further information (total 20 events for a class of 20 students). Each student was then given the correct time of their event, and the time line updated. That this activity falls within the laboratory part of a course is presumably one of class-sizes: it would clearly be unmanageable with classes with 100s of students, although using a web-based version might facilitate its implementation with slightly larger classes as a single group or sub-dividing even larger classes.

While some misconceptions remained, comparison of the student scores on the laboratory final exam showed a significant shift towards higher marks. (Original version: mean: 5.76/9, mode: 6/9; revised version: mean: 6.39/9, mode: 6/9 – approximately.)

Although the paper considers activities delivered in a laboratory context, several of the examples given could be implemented in a classroom context. The authors also give a few general ideas for increasing inquiry:

• Use short answer questions instead of fill-in-the-blank activities;
• Ask students to attempt classification before providing a key/instructions;
• Replace directions with a challenge/goal to design the process.

These guidelines can also be useful for designing activities for students in more theoretical contexts, and, at 10.5 pages, the paper is a good read for both example activities, analysing provision using the inquiry rubric, and some general guidelines for increasing inquiry.

1. Grissom AN, Czajka CD, McConnell DA. Revisions of physical geology laboratory courses to increase the level of inquiry: Implications for teaching and learning. Journal of Geosciences Education. 2015;63(4):285–96.
2. Buck LB, Bretz SL, Towns MH. Characterizing the level of inquiry in the undergraduate laboratory. Journal of College Science Teaching. 2008;38(1):52–8.
3. Cervato C, Frodeman R. The significance of geologic time: Cultural, educational, and economic frameworks. In: Earth and mind II: A synthesis of research on thinking and learning in the geosciences: Geological society of america special paper 486. 2012. p. 19–27.