Earth and Space Science (ESS) Scaffolded Inquiry Labs

The labs are designed for introductory non-STEM major undergraduate earth and space science courses, including geology, oceanography, astronomy, and earth science.

Basic familiarity with navigating websites, following written instructions, recording numerical values, and performing arithmetic is useful. Website and application navigation are introduced within the activities. The targeted scientific and quantitative literacies are introduced and practiced rather than uniformly assumed to have been mastered in advance. For example, the labs explain how to calculate percentages and averages and how to distinguish observations from interpretations. These explanations are followed by questions that ask students to apply the skills.

The collection can be used as a sequence of topical laboratory activities or as individual labs aligned with course content. Each lab features five to eight parts, allowing instructors to adapt the materials for shorter lab periods or as brief in-class activities to enhance lectures.

Within a lab, students practice different components of the process of science, including collecting data, analyzing evidence, planning methods, and evaluating conclusions. Many labs include a synthesis section involving a scaffolded research report or the evaluation of a sample report. When assigning individual parts separately, instructors should retain any earlier instructions, definitions, or data tables needed to complete them.

Laboratory Students will be able to:

• Climate and Weather: Identify factors that affect climate and distinguish climate and weather.
• Impacts: Analyze parameters that affect the results of impacts.
• Measuring Magnetic Fields: Explain factors that impact magnetic field strength.
• Sea Level: Use data to describe and explain how tides, hurricanes, tsunami, and sea level rise affect sea level.
• Seasons: Use data to explain changes resulting from seasons and their cause.
• The Sun: Analyze different wavelengths and sunspots to learn about the Sun.
• Tectonics and Fireballs: Compare the patterns and causes of earthquakes, volcanoes, and fireballs to tectonic plate boundaries.
• Telescopes and Spectra: Describe characteristics of telescopes and what they can see, and interpret what spectra can tell us.
• Tides: Use data to describe how and why the sea level changes as a result of tides.

Students will be able to apply and analyze steps in the process of science. They will determine appropriate methods for answering scientific questions, collect and analyze relevant data, and draw evidence-based conclusions that answer the questions.

Depending on the selected lab, students will distinguish between observations and interpretations, identify and analyze assumptions, identify causal relationships, and distinguish between causation and correlation. Students will also evaluate whether proposed conclusions are supported by data and whether the methods and data collected are appropriate for the scientific question. Synthesis activities ask students to connect scientific questions, methods, observations, analyses, and conclusions. In activities involving sample research reports, students act as peer reviewers, identify weaknesses, and consider how the investigation could be improved.

Students will practice reading graphs, calculating averages and percentages, performing unit conversions, and organizing measurements in data tables. Selected activities also require brief independent online research to find explanations, diagrams, videos, or animations relevant to the investigation.

Students will practice communicating scientific findings by interpreting and completing scaffolded research reports or selecting appropriate ways to communicate results. Each lab ends with a reflection asking students to identify a question that connects to their personal experience and explain the connection in two or three sentences. The magnetic field lab additionally provides practice collecting measurements with a smartphone or tablet magnetometer.

To solve problems, scientists ask scientific questions. They determine the best methods to answer the question, collect the data, and analyze it to draw evidence-based conclusions that answer the question. Students practice these steps in the process of science throughout the collection.

The activities introduce students to the relevant website, simulation, or measurement application before asking them to collect and analyze data. Across the collection, students work with provided scientific questions, methods, and data tables; make decisions about methods and measurements; evaluate proposed conclusions; and synthesize the components of an investigation. Some sections focus on planning methods without collecting additional data. Embedded questions ask students to identify the part of the process of science they have just practiced.

Climate and Weather (Acrobat (PDF) 465kB Sep28 26) 
Impacts (Acrobat (PDF) 441kB Sep28 26) 
Measuring Magnetic Fields (Acrobat (PDF) 410kB Sep28 26) 
Sea Level (Acrobat (PDF) 540kB Sep28 26) 
The Sun (Acrobat (PDF) 443kB Sep28 26)
Seasons (Acrobat (PDF) 543kB Sep28 26)
Tectonics and Fireballs (Acrobat (PDF) 531kB Sep28 26)
Telescopes and Spectra (Acrobat (PDF) 576kB Sep28 26)
Tides (Acrobat (PDF) 570kB Sep28 26)

Selecting and preparing activities. Choose complete labs or selected parts to match course content and available instructional time. When using a part independently, check whether it depends on an earlier data table, definition, or navigation instruction. Before assigning the activity, test the required websites and applications and review the specified locations, dates, units, and settings.

Assessment is embedded in the laboratory activities. Students complete data tables and answer multiple-choice, multiple-select, matching, numerical, and short written questions. Their responses provide evidence of whether they can collect relevant data, perform the targeted calculations, interpret graphs and tables, identify appropriate methods, and draw conclusions supported by evidence.