Development of a Lecture-Tutorial for Comparative Planetary Geology

We present a new Lecture-Tutorial (a small-group, guided-inquiry activity) on comparative planetary geology and demonstrate it to be an effective active-engagement learning tool for introductory undergraduate astronomy classes. Following the established format of existing Lecture-Tutorials for physics and astronomy, we developed and tested our planetary geology Lecture-Tutorial with over 1000 undergraduate students in two non-major, introductory astronomy classes at the University of Colorado Boulder. Our materials are based on systematic study of student understanding and reasoning about comparative planetary geology from an astronomical perspective.