Undergraduate introductory course in geoscience

Students should be introduced to the geologic time scale and some important events in Earth's history.

We have used this activity as a homework assignment after the topic is introduced in lecture and reading, but it could also be used in class, in lab, or as group work.

Students will be able to place a series of geologic events in the correct "locations" along a geologic time line.

Scaling: understanding the relative proportions of numbers from thousands to billions

This worksheet focuses on better grasping the vastness of geologic time by working from a somewhat familiar scale (1 million years) and progressively increasing the scale to better understand an unfamiliar scale (4.56 billion years). Moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar has been shown to be an effective strategy to understand large magnitudes (Resnick, Shipley, Newcombe, Massey, & Wills, 2012).

Students are given 4 time scales: 1 million years, 100 million years, 1 billion years, and 4.56 billion years. For each scale, students add important events using the given ages. As students go from one scale to the next, all events on the previous scale are copied onto the next the larger time scale and resized to reflect the new scale. This is repeated for each time scale. With this, students can see how the relationship between events changes when the scale is changed, and notice how the "familiar" scale becomes smaller and smaller.

This worksheet uses the sketch-understanding program with built-in tutor: CogSketch. Therefore, students, instructors, and/or institution computer labs need to download the program from here: http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/software/cogsketch/. At any point during the worksheet, students can click the FEEDBACK button and their sketch is compared to the solution image. The built-in tutor identifies any discrepancies and reports pre-written feedback to help the student correct their sketch until they are done with the activity. Once worksheets are emailed to the instructor, worksheets can be batch graded and easily evaluated. This program allows instructors to assign sketching activities that require very little time commitment. Instead, the built-in tutor provides feedback whenever the student requests, without the presence of the instructor. More information on using the program and the activity is in the Instructor's Notes.

We have developed approximately two dozen introductory geoscience worksheets using this program. Each worksheet has a background image and instructions for a sketching task. You can find additional worksheets by searching for "CogSketch" using the search box at the top of this page. We expect to have uploaded all of them by the end of the summer of 2016.

CogSketch has a gradebook feature that allows instructors to batch grade worksheets using the defined rubric in the worksheet. Once graded, instructors can also open all the sketches and evaluate student work. Instructions are given in the Instructor's Notes.

Download CogSketch: http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/software/cogsketch/