Final Project for Introductory Soils Course

Daniel Hirmas, University of Kansas

This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection

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)
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 page first made public: Jun 6, 2013

Summary

These assignments represent scaffolding for a self-directed final project.

Chemistry and Mineralogy, Classification, Critical Zone Processes, ...(more) | College Introductory, College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16), Graduate/Professional

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Context

Audience

This is a piggy back undergraduate/graduate student introductory soils course taught in the department of Geography and the Environmental Studies program.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

This is an ongoing assignment throughout the semester and as such there are not concepts that the students must have mastered before beginning this activity.

How the activity is situated in the course

This is a culminating project that is worked on through a sequence of exercises throughout the semester.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

The goals for this project are to give the students practice in developing a research project, conducting field sampling, laboratory analyses, interpreting data and writing up the results in a journal format.

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

Formulation of hypotheses
Analyses of data
Field sampling
Synthesis of information

Other skills goals for this activity

Technical writing skills

Description and Teaching Materials

These assignments are meant to be given throughout the semester to provide feedback to the students as they progress on their projects and to encourage them to get started early.

General Final Project Instructions (Acrobat (PDF) 37kB Apr29 13)
Title and Abstract Instructions (Acrobat (PDF) 35kB Apr29 13)
Paragraph and References Instruction (Acrobat (PDF) 47kB Apr29 13)
Grading Rubric (Acrobat (PDF) 68kB Apr29 13)