Effective Strategies for Undergraduate Geoscience Teaching Virtual Event Series

Teaching and assessing in-depth understanding of fundamental concepts using concept sketches: March 27, 2013

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Leader: Steve Reynolds and Julia Johnson, Arizona State University

This event has already taken place

Concept sketches are an excellent approach for learning, teaching, and assessing the understanding of concepts in the geosciences. They consist of simple sketches annotated with complete sentences that describe the features, processes, and interrelationships. When used for assessment, they evaluate whether students have an in-depth understanding of a concept or process. They can be quickly graded and so are appropriate for classes of any size, including online courses. In this workshop, we will explore how to use concept sketches for in-person and online courses. We hope you will join us!

Goals for participants are to:

• Understand the characteristics, uses, and advantages of concept sketches.
• Experience the trade-offs involved in grading concept sketches with detailed versus general rubrics.
• Be able to deploy concept sketches in their own classes.

Duration - 1 hour
Format - Online web presentation via Adobe Connect web conference software with questions and discussion. Participants will receive an email with instructions detailing how to log into the event approximately one week prior to the event.
Registration - The registration deadline for this webinar has passed. The cost of the webinar is $30 (or $20 for NAGT members; learn more about becoming a member of NAGT). Once you register for the webinar, you can pay the registration fee. The registration fee is due by March 22, 2013.
Cost - The cost of the webinar is $30 (or $20 for NAGT members; learn more about becoming a member of NAGT).

Please email Heather Macdonald (rhmacd AT wm.edu) if you have any questions about this event or Molly Kent (mkent AT carleton.edu) if you have technical questions.

Presenters

Biographies were derived from faculty web pages.

Steve Reynolds is a professor of geoscience at Arizona State University. He is a co-Principal Investigator of ACEPT (Arizona Collaboration for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers), a major NSF-funded science education reform movement being coordinated at ASU. As part of this program, Steve and his colleages are reforming the introductory geology classes at ASU and other ACEPT-participating schools, with the goal of incorporating more hands-on, active learning, critical inquiry, scientific reasoning, and multimedia. Steve also has an active science-outreach program, including giving talks at teacher workshops, appearing on PBS specials, and narrating geologic videos for the new Arizona Science Center.

Julia Johnson is is interested in geoscience-education, focusing on using student- and instructor-generated sketches for learning, teaching, and assessment in college geology classes. Julia teaches introductory geology courses and supervises the associated labs at Arizona State University. She also coordinates the introductory geology teaching efforts of the department, helping other instructors incorporate active learning into large lecture classes. Julia is recognized as one of the best teachers in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, receiving student-nominated teaching honors and very high teaching evaluations. She coauthored Exploring Geology and Observing and Interpreting Geology, a Laboratory Manual for Introduction to Geology. She has also authored and coauthored several publications on geology and science-education research. She develops websites used by geology students around the world, such as the Visualizing Topography and Biosphere 3D websites.

Steve Reynolds' website (more info) offers links related to Steve and Julia's geoscience education projects.

References and Resources

Screencast of Teaching and assessing in-depth understanding of fundamental concepts using concept sketches.

Slides from Teaching and assessing in-depth understanding of fundamental concepts using concept sketches (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 6.9MB Mar27 13).

Recommended on-line resources

• The Concept Maps page from Starting Point provides information on what concept maps/sketches are, their benefits, and how they can be used in class.
• Understanding What our Geoscience Students are Learning: Observing and Assessing - Find activities for evaluating student learning, information on how to use different assessment methods in different learning environments, and information on researching teaching and learning.
• More on Rubrics and developing rubrics, with examples.
• Pedagogy in Action - Assessment Module - This website is the homepage for part of SERC's resource collection on assessment. This collection provides both basic and in-depth information about assessment and how to apply assessment techniques in the classroom.