Earthquake Case Study

Kaatje Kraft

Mesa Community College

This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection and has been reviewed by 1 other review process

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This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process.

This review took place as a part of a faculty professional development workshop where groups of faculty reviewed each others' activities and offered feedback and ideas for improvements. To learn more about the process On the Cutting Edge uses for activity review, see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.

This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Collection

Resources in this top level collection a) must have scored Exemplary or Very Good in all five review categories, and must also rate as “Exemplary” in at least three of the five categories. The five categories included in the peer review process are

Scientific Accuracy
Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
Pedagogic Effectiveness
Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
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For more information about the peer review process itself, please see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.

This page first made public: May 16, 2008

Summary

This activity is a multiple case study analysis of different earthquakes that leads to student interpretation of claims, evidence and prediction/recommendations.

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Context

Audience

Introduction to geologic disasters

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Students have a basic understanding of what occurs during an earthquake, common hazards, varying earthquake scales.

How the activity is situated in the course

This is the culminating portion of my earthquake "unit" in my course. It is the last in a sequence of activities (the first of which starts with the Mercalli Scale Activity).

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

By the end of this activity, students will be able to identify the cause of an earthquake and the damage that occurred. They will also be able to make predictions about future events in a given region based on evidence from the earthquake itself. In addition, students will make connections between the use of observations as data for geoscientists in the process of science.

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

Students will analyze data, synthesize ideas, and make predictions and recommendations about future events. Students will use their metacognitive skills to connect the course content to the metacurriculum of the process of science and their own thinking process.

Other skills goals for this activity

Reading evaluation
Oral communication
Written communication
Data Analysis
Collaborative skills
Group presentations
Time management
Self evaluation of performance and comprehension

Description of the activity/assignment

Students work in a jigsaw format, they start in an expert group analyzing one particular aspect of the earthquake that occurred (e.g., tsunami, geologic maps, damage assessment). After analyzing the data/information provided, students get into their new groups, which are a "consulting team" to make recommendations to key governmental officials about the earthquake they studied and implications for future development. These are presented in a poster session style event, which then leads to individual papers that are written about the same topic, which are peer reviewed and revised. Students are asked to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses in the process and to consider changes for future opportunities, as well as connect the curriculum to the overall process of science.