Drumlin Formation Library Work

Alison M Anders

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This activity has been reviewed by 2 review processes (view details)

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

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.
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.

Initial Publication Date: May 2, 2008 | Reviewed: November 3, 2013 (see revision history: 2 events)

Summary

Students work in groups to research different models of Drumlin formation in the Geology Library. Students present the results of their research to each other and each student completes a writing assignment using information from all groups.

Glacial/Periglacial | College Upper (15-16), Graduate/Professional

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Context

Audience

A mixed undergraduate/graduate course for geology, natural resources and geotechnical engineering majors.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Knowledge of glacial processes generally

How the activity is situated in the course

This is part of a series of assignments focusing on writing different portions of a scientific manuscript. For this assignment students generate an introduction.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

learning different models for drumlin formation
reading primary literature

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

dealing with multiple working hypotheses
synthesizing material for presentation

Other skills goals for this activity

library research skills
oral presentation
group work
writing
proper citation format

Description of the activity/assignment

Students will individually produce a written introduction for a paper about the presence of drumlins on Mars - this introduction describes different models for drumlin formation on earth. To prepare for this assignment, students work in groups to do library research to find and read articles. The groups summarize their findings for each other. Each student then writes an introduction incorporating material from all the groups.
Designed for a geomorphology course
Uses geomorphology to solve problems in other fields

Determining whether students have met the goals

The presentations provide information on the success of each group's research and I take notes to have a baseline for what might be in each student's paper. Grades are assigned based on the written introduction.

More information about assessment tools and techniques.