The goal of this activity is to establish early in the semester that the strategies for learning science may be different from those that students have successfully used in other disciplines.

Issues to address with this activity:

1. Some students have not had to work hard to learn in other disciplines where they have confidence in their learning strategies.
2. First year students in college were, by definition, high achievers in high school. Now they will need to modify their strategies to learn effectively in a more competitive environment.
3. Students often believe learning science is an innate, not an acquired skill.

Organize a mini-lecture on strategies for learning science. The discussion should emphasize the added value in science of 'doing' and 'practice.' Moreover, in the geosciences memorizing vocabulary will offer only limited understanding (as many students rely on memorization to prepare for exams). Discuss the value of planning study as an on-going activity rather than something to cram into the week before exams. Show how self-assessment through use of previous exams and textbook questions are more likely to galvenize undedrstanding.

Example
In the field of meteorology one sure-fire misconception is to challenge students to choose which air is heavier:

(a) air at 90 degrees F and muggy
(b) air at 90 degrees F and bone dry.

Wrap that content question with a metacognitive question that asks them to state on what they base their response. Invariably students will pick the muggy air based on their experience of discomfort on a muggy day. Now ask them to justify alone or in groups how they arrived at their answer. In the midst of this debate provide the basic data of the atomic weights of hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen and ask them to use that information in their response.

In time the hope would be that students would look at the different molecular weights of N₂ and O₂, the dominate ingredients of dry air, versus the molecular weight of water vapor, H₂O and come to realize that replacing N₂ and O₂ with H₂O yields a lower net weight. Hence the muggy air is lighter (a fact that plays an important role in formation of "dry lines" that trigger tornadoes). As students realize their preconception was wrong it is valuable to point out that they probably have other pre-conceptions that are wrong and that their are methods for assessing whether a concept is correct. This is an excellent time to discuss how learning is aided through self-regulated assessment and adaptation. How do they know what they know? How can they test whether their 'knowledge' is correct?