Susan Conrad

Local Rock Outcrop Project in Physical Geology & Historical Geology part of SAGE 2YC:Workshops:Supporting Student Success in Geoscience at Two-year Colleges:Essays
One way I get Physical Geology & Historical Geology students in my mid-Hudson Valley community college to apply new concepts is by giving them the option of studying a local rock outcrop for their final project. The process is really a mini-independent study as students apply what they learn in class about minerals, rocks, maps, geologic processes, and plate tectonics to "their" outcrop. I visit many of the students at their outcrops. Students can also share their own videos and photos of their site visits with me. The geology of most of the outcrops has not been recently described or interpreted in the geologic literature, or even in local hiking guidebooks, in any meaningful way, so students really must make their own observations and interpret them in order to unravel the geologic history of their outcrop.

Research on Students' Conceptual Understanding of Geology/Solid Earth Science Content part of NAGT:Our Work:Geoscience Education Research:Community Framework for GER:Conceptual Understanding - Solid Earth
A chapter from the NAGT's Community Framework for Geoscience Education Research that examines research on undergraduate students' conceptual understanding of solid Earth science, identifying two grand challenges: developing robust methods to address student misconceptions about Earth systems, and establishing empirically based optimal learning progressions in geoscience curricula to support both majors and non-majors.