Hotspot Prediction

Students in an introductory-level geoscience course

Students should know that hotspot tracks form from a tectonic plate moving over a relatively fixed mantle plume, producing a chain of progressively younger volcanic features.

This activity is used as a formative assessment question following a lecture or activity about hotspot formation. Displaying the results after administering the question provides students and instructor immediate feedback about how well students can visualize the relationship between plate motion and the fixed hotspot.

The goals of this activity are:

• to engage students in predicting apparent hotspot formation relative to plate motion (spatial skill)
• to evaluate whether students understand how hotspots record plate motion (content skill)

Students will make a spatial prediction, receive feedback, and modify their prediction based on the feedback.

Not applicable

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Provenance: Nicole LaDue, Northern Illinois University
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

Science of Learning: Why It Works

There is accumulating evidence that engaging in spatial prediction and receiving feedback about the nature of one's errors leads to improved spatial reasoning (Gagnier et al. 2017; Resnick et al., 2017). Making a prediction, receiving feedback, and learning from the mismatch between the expected and actual outcomes is a process studied in cognitive science called the delta-rule model of learning (Rescorla and Wagner, 1972). Modern models of learning from the education research literature focuses on Piaget's concept of accommodation, where people will adjust their mental models as a consequence of the the feedback (Dole and Sinatra, 1998). Examples from research on geology concepts show us that students' build more scientifically accurate mental models after engaging in prediction and feedback. Gagnier et al. (2017) engaged students in making predictions about the interior of a geologic structure using block diagrams. The cycle of prediction and feedback facilitated students improved performance on a test of penetrative thinking. Resnick et al. (2017) engaged students in making predictions about the geologic time scale using a classroom response system (clickers). Students answered multiple-choice questions about the position of geologic events on a typical diagram of the geologic time scale. The spatial prediction clicker questions were as effective as, and more efficient than a hands-on meter stick activity at building a scientifically accurate linear conception of geologic time. Building on this research, we propose that the technique described below is a useful approach to identify students' spatial conceptions associated with various geologic phenomena (LaDue et al., 2021; LaDue and Shipley, 2018).

I use this activity to assess student understanding immediately after lecturing about how hotspot tracks record plate motion. One approach that may help is requiring students to gesture with a pencil held below a piece of paper how a plate (the paper) moves over the hotspot (the pencil). Gesturing can offload the cognitive effort of spatial thinking about relative motion to facilitate understanding.

This question is useful for students to self-assess where their answer fits relative to other students in the class. Top Hat displays student responses in a heat map image that highlights the most common answers. In most systems it is possible to designate a region for the correct answer, but receiving a right-wrong answer is likely less useful than engaging students in peer discussion if the students' responses do not converge on one region.

Resources: There are several systems that offer click-on-diagram questions. The one we used is: https://tophat.com

References

Beatty, I. D., & Gerace, W. J. (2009). Technology-enhanced formative assessment: A research-based pedagogy for teaching science with classroom response technology. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 18(2), 146-162.

Dole, J. A., & Sinatra, G. M. (1998). Reconceptalizing change in the cognitive construction of knowledge. Educational psychologist, 33(2-3), 109-128.

Gagnier, K. M., Atit, K., Ormand, C. J., & Shipley, T. F. (2017). Comprehending 3D diagrams: Sketching to support spatial reasoning. Topics in cognitive science, 9(4), 883-901.

LaDue, N. D., Ackerman, J. R., Blaum, D., & Shipley, T. F. (2021). Assessing Water Literacy: Undergraduate Student Conceptions of Groundwater and Surface Water Flow. Water, 13(5), 622.

LaDue, N.D. and Shipley, T.F. (2018). Click-on-Diagram Questions: A New Tool to Study Conceptions using Classroom Response Systems. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 27(6), 492-507.

Rescorla, R. A., & Wagner, A. R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement. Classical conditioning II: Current research and theory, 2, 64-99.

Resnick, I., Newcombe, N. S., & Shipley, T. F. (2017). Dealing with big numbers: Representation and understanding of magnitudes outside of human experience. Cognitive science, 41(4), 1020-1041.