Using Project EDDIE modules in GEOL 103 - Earthquakes and Volcanoes

Jess Domino, Alfred University

About this Course

GEOL 103 - Earthquakes and Volcanoes

Lecture and Lab

Introductory Undergraduate

Non-Majors

16

students in the course

Show Course Description

Hide

This course reviews what is presently known about earthquakes and volcanoes, investigates ways to reduce loss of life and property, and explores some current research which may lead to a better understanding of these violent natural events. Three lectures and a laboratory.

Show Course Goals

Hide

Learning objectives:
1. Demonstrate improved oral and written communication skills by describing, defining, interpreting, explaining and discussing the provided information in written English and via oral presentation. 
2. Analyze and synthesize scientific information/data in written lab reports using scientific literacy skills honed through application of scientific methods. 
3. Examine the cause and effect of natural disasters and environmental problems, their impact on different societal groups and communities with regards to environmental regulations, enforcement, sustainability, access to resources and injustice. 
4. Discuss potential solutions and actions to our current global climate crisis. 
5. Determine credible sources to present information to peers in oral presentations.

Show Course Syllabus

Hide

EDDIE Module(s) Adopted and/or Adapted

Climate Change Module

My course focused on the earth processes that create earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. To give students a full view of Earth processes, we ended the course talking about climate change. Students were eager to learn more about climate change and after two lab sessions, they were able to discuss their findings and make predictions about future temperature trends.

Jump to: Course Context | Teaching Details | How It Went | Future Use

Relationship of EDDIE Module(s) to my Course

As an introductory course designed for non-majors, I wanted to incorporate climate change into the curriculum since this is likely the only science course they will take. The last two weeks of the course were devoted to climate change lectures and lab exercises after having gone through plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes earlier in the semester. Before using this module, students worked on a lab that incorporated volcanic eruption and global temperature data (included here as Lab 9). This allowed them to transition from thinking about deep Earth processes to atmospheric changes and also acted as a primer to graph creation before the climate change lab. Building off of volcanic eruptions causing global temperature changes for short periods of time and going into long term global temperature changes in the climate change module worked really well with students and I will do it like this in the future.

Teaching Details

I incorporated this module as a lab exercise. Since the lab period was only one hour, I only assigned parts A and B for students to complete.

How did the activity go?

Overall, the module went well and students were able to draw the correct conclusions. The biggest challenge for students was using Excel/Google Sheets to create the graphs necessary for answering questions. We worked on very similar graphs the week prior (Volcanoes and Climate), which helped them with understanding the data for this module better.

The students were able to visualize and discuss amongst their lab groups about how there is a direct relationship between CO2 in the atmosphere and global average temperature. They struggled the most with generating graphs, but once they were able to do it, they understood the trends.

Future Use

This instructor story and adaption materials were developed during a Project EDDIE Faculty Mentoring Network in partnership with QUBES in the Spring of 2022.

×

×