Biogeochemistry Workshop

1. Biogeochemistry Workshop Teaching for Student Learning Alexandra Moore am113@cornell.edu

2. Overview • Setting Goals • Articulating Goals and Content • Teaching Strategies • Assessment of Learning

3. Setting Goals • Student-focused v. Teacher-focused • Overarching goals • Measurable outcomes • Higher-order thinking skills v. • Lower-order thinking skills • Ancillary goals

4. My goals for the workshop • My teaching will model effective pedagogy • Participants will leave with two deliverables • Participants will be able to effectively design a course (activity) • Participants will be able to employ a variety of teaching strategies

5. Student-focused v. Teacher-focused • Teacher-focused view: “Provide students with an introduction to the geology of environmental issues and geologic hazards” • Student-focused view: “Prepare a scientifically sound argument on a local environmental issue to present at a town forum or in a town newspaper.”

6. Thinking about “teaching” this environmental geology course points us inevitably down the path of presenting material to students, exposing students to a series of examples, and so forth. • Thinking about the course as enabling students to do something in the future points us down a very different path, one where we would need to design a course that prepares students to do something significant on their own after the course is over.

7. Higher order/Lower order thinking • Bloom’s Taxonomy - Cognitive Domain • Knowledge • Comprehension • Application • Analysis • Synthesis • Evaluation

8. Lower order thinking skills • Knowledge, comprehension, some application • Verbs that reflect tasks that involve lower order thinking skills include: list, explain, calculate, identify, describe, recognize, summarize, discuss, define, know about, recall, paraphrase, locate

9. Higher order thinking skills • Analysis, synthesis, evaluation, application • Verbs that reflect tasks involving higher order thinking skills include: derive, predict, analyze, design, interpret, synthesize, formulate, plan, correlate, evaluate, create, critique, adapt

10. Goals that focus on higher-order thinking skills have lower-order skills embedded within them.

11. Write student-focused goals with measurable outcomes • A measurable outcome is a specific task that students can do that make it clear that they have accomplished the course goals. • "I want students to be able to interpret unfamiliar tectonic settings based on information on physiography, seismicity, and volcanic activity.” • "I want students to be able to understand plate tectonics.” • Which goal will be easier to assess?

12. Write concrete, not abstract goals • “I want students to appreciate the complexity of Earth systems.” • OK - but how will you tell if students “appreciate complexity” or not?

13. Goals and content unite to drive the design of a course • Example: Depth rather than breadth is a viable course design alternative • Rather than covering a little bit about all sedimentary environments, for example, a course can provide students with a deep experience in only a few environments, with the expectation that students will be able to take that deep experience and apply it to studying an unfamiliar sedimentary environment in the future.

14. Student Learning • Research shows clearly that a student must be engaged to learn • People learn by actively participating in observing, speaking, writing, listening, thinking, drawing and doing. • Learning is enhanced when a person sees potential applications, implications, and benefits to others. • Learning build on current understanding, (including misconceptions).

15. Effective teaching = Effective learning environments • Environments where students are actively participating and engaged with the material are crucial to student learning • A traditional lecture classroom focused on presentation of content by an instructor does not typically promote active participation and engagement