Using Student-Generated Concept Sketches for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment

1. Using Student-Generated Concept Sketches for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment Barbara J. Tewksbury (Hamilton College) btewksbu@hamilton.edu

2. How geologists use sketches and illustrations • For recording observations and ideas • For organizing knowledge • For conveying ideas to others

3. How geologists use sketches and illustrations • We are actively engaged in creating sketches and illustrations • They become an integral part of constructing our own knowledge and conveying knowledge to others

4. How do we ask students to use sketches and illustrations? • To receive knowledge • we ask students to learn from diagrams in books • To reproduce knowledge at a rote level • we commonly ask students to draw labeled sketches

5. What do we know about how students use illustrations in textbooks? • Many students skip illustrations entirely without seeing them as more than pictures • Most students do not know how to interpret or use scientific illustrations (Lowe, 1989, 1993; Schwartz, 1993) • Many students can easily label a diagram by rote but be unable to articulate concepts

6. Work by Steve Reynolds and Julia Johnson (Arizona State) • How to make illustrations an effective part of the learning process? • How to help students use illustrations as part of constructing knowledge? • How to make a student’s experience with illustrations more like ours?

7. Reynolds and Johnson’s work • Explored concept mapping • Students organize own knowledge as network of linked concepts; demonstrable learning gains (e.g., Esiobu & Soyibo, 1995) • Argued that concept maps fail to adequately address spatial relationships important in geology

8. Reynolds and Johnson’s work • Developed idea of a concept sketch • Sketch or diagram concisely annotated with short statements describing processes, concepts, and interrelationships shown in the sketch • Builds on value of concept mapping

9. What does a concept sketch look like? (Reynolds and Jackson, in press)

10. Features of a concept sketch • More than a simple labeled diagram • Combines identifying and linking key concepts while retaining spatial relationships among concepts

11. (Reynolds and Johnson, in press)

12. Reynolds and Johnson’s work • Instructor-generated diagrams • Most successful for student learning if students construct own captions • Forces students to think though key features and processes • Student-generated diagrams • Students must make decisions about what to draw • Forces students to think more deeply about concepts

13. Reynolds and Johnson’s work • Using concept sketches • In class • As homework preparation for class • On exams

14. My experience • Steve described idea to me at end of April last spring • I decided to try it in the field and for final project in my structural geology course

15. My experience • Gave one homework assignment to teach students how to do concept sketches • Students had no problem figuring out what to do

16. My experience • In the field, students: • Made concept sketches at each outcrop • Took notes in concept caption form • In the lab, students: • Examined samples and thin sections from the outcrops

17. My experience • Assignment for final project: • Create a set of concept diagrams, with a short introduction, to illustrate the structural features and geologic history of Glens Falls/Whitehall area, with an emphasis on deformation mechanisms and causes of deformation. • Integrate field and laboratory observations.

24. Results • I was struck by: • How natural it seemed to my students to make concept sketches • How much more complete their observations and notes were in the field • How much I learned from reading concept captions about what they knew • How much most of them enjoyed the process

25. More information on concept sketches • TSG Resource Site • http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/structure/presentations.html • Scroll down to Short Demonstration Sessions, S1B • Article in press in JGE • Reynolds, Stephen J. and Jackson, Julia K., in press, Concept sketches – using student- and instructor-generated, annotated sketches for learning, teaching, and assessment: Journal of Geoscience Education.