1 / 8

Book Reviews of Popular Science Books

This assignment encourages students to delve into a geoscience topic of personal interest, critically review a book, and develop communication skills. The instructor gains insights into students' interests and abilities while learning about the books that are reviewed.

bworthy
Download Presentation

Book Reviews of Popular Science Books

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Book Reviews of Popular Science Books Heather Macdonald College of William & Mary

  2. Context • Earth History course, ~ 20 students • Inspiration for using book reviews • Suzanne O’Connell – Oceanography course (JGE, 1997) • Bev Sher – Emerging Diseases (Freshman Seminar)

  3. Assignment Goals • Students will • Delve more deeply into a geoscience topic of personal interest • Critically review a book • Develop communication skills • Instructor will • Learn more about students’ interests & abilities • Learn more about the books that are reviewed

  4. Assignment details • Select a book • From list given by instructor or selected by student and approved by instructor • Encourage them to read reviews before selecting book • Write a book review, include other book reviews • Give a short (3-4 minute) presentation -without ppt or with one ppt slide

  5. The Book Review • The Review – Oral and Written • Basic information • Description of book • Review and commentary • Why did you select this book and would you recommend it to your classmates? • What was surprising? Interesting? • Quality of book, quality of science? • Other reviews of the same book • Needs to be interesting

  6. Results & Things to Consider • What students learned • New content, process of science, the history of geoscience, … • Consider intended audience and perspective of the author • What I learned • Student interests • Ability to communication • More about different books • Importance of selecting books

  7. Book Choices

  8. Things to Consider • What books? – depends on your goals • Who chooses book? • What to require in review? • Written review? Oral review? Both? • Your reactions and ideas?

More Related