Abstract
As part of a major curriculum overhaul within the geology department at the University of St. Thomas, we developed a new, junior-level course that combines content from traditional structural geology, petrology and plate tectonics (PT) courses with more active, problem-based pedagogical techniques. The course is organized around one main goal: by the end of this course, students will be able to take an incomplete and disparate geologic data set from a region (including petrologic, structural, geochemical, and geophysical data), organize it, analyze it and clearly report their interpretation of the possible PT setting or tectonic history. And as a corollary to this goal: given a particular PT setting students should be able to 1) predict what rock types, rock-forming processes and structures they would expect to find in different locations and through time within that setting and, 2) describe the composition and properties of the lithosphere at that setting and predict how these properties will evolve. This year-long course has nine modules. Each module tackles a different type of PT setting, uses one or two specific examples of the type of setting, and covers rock-forming and structural processes occurring in that setting. Each module has a culminating assignment that serves as the organizational and guiding goal for the module as well as an assessment instrument. Class and lab time are used for smaller projects, labs, lectures, group problem-solving, student presentations, discussions and other hands-on activities, all of which contribute toward the end-of-module project. These also give students opportunities to learn the content and skills required to complete the project. Student evaluations of the course are higher than when it was taught in the traditional format. Students especially like that smaller assignments build towards a final project so that their learning is in context. Also, two modules use areas of active research by faculty members and students can use one assignment--a research proposal--as a real submission for summer funding. Informal instructor assessment of student learning suggests improved outcomes.