Abstract

The COVID pandemic has changed how all of us are teaching and assessing our students. As in many institutions, most all classes at Waubonsee Community College were online, and in the case of the Physical Geology lecture and lab classes, asynchronous online. This new modality necessitated changes to many assignments and laboratory exercises and experiments. A critical part of the challenge is to make sure that solutions to assessments cannot easily be found with a Google search. This lead to the development of new assessments for the Fall 2020 semester. For the lecture class, a new homework assignment was developed in which students picked a well-defined topic in geology and were asked to write a 1 page paper on it, often called '1 pagers'. The motivation was to engage the students in something they are interested in, while still being on task. Motivation for this assignment was the background discussion section common to many grant proposals. For the lab class, the facebook page 'Higher Education and the Coronavirus" was consulted for ideas, in particular a post by Sheldon Turner of Triton College. He suggested assigning an 'infographic', which is essentially a well-designed and informative poster. Students were asked to design an infographic as their final exam, which was to cover some part of one of the labs that was in the second half of the semester. Reviewing the results of the 1 pagers and infographics, it is clear that these assignments tap into the students own interests, providing them with ownership and motivation leading to their success. Details of the assignments and examples will be provided.

Context

They are summative assessments for Physical Geology

Why It Works

The assignments combine the students own interests and creativity within the context of the class