Students' questions provide unique insight into their understanding of course content. However, student questions are not often the focus of education research. Previous work on student questions has focused on what types of questions undergraduates ask about earth science data visualizations (Kastens, Zrada, Turrin, 2019). The goal of this follow-up study is to investigate if and how earth science students' questions evolve over the course of a semester.

In this small pilot study, twelve undergraduate students from a small liberal arts college explored earth science data visualizations using the PolarExplorer iPad application (http://www.polar-observer.org/PolarExplorerHome.html), and were prompted to ask questions about what they viewed. All students were enrolled in an earth science course at the time of the study. Participation took place once at the beginning of the semester and again at the end of the semester.

Questions will be coded using an existing taxonomy, designed for coding student questions about earth science (Kastens, Zrada, Turrin, 2019). This taxonomy includes overarching categories such as "Questions about the Data" and "Questions about the Earth," with a total of twenty-four possible sub-categories. Additionally, taxonomic sub-categories pertaining to questions about data and the earth are associated with a level of Bloom's Taxonomy, as an indicator of question depth.

Results will explore what types of questions students who are currently enrolled in an earth science course ask, and if/how these questions evolve over the course of a semester. These findings would inform earth science educators, providing further insight into their students' understanding, potential misconceptions, and growth. Future work would focus on a larger sample of students in one specific earth science course.