{"id":32290,"date":"2019-09-30t08:58:08","date_gmt":"2019-09-30t13:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=32290"},"modified":"2019-09-30t08:58:08","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30t13:58:08","slug":"teaching-innovations-at-vanderbilt-garrett-tate-lily-claiborne-and-student-analysis-of-real-world-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2019\/09\/teaching-innovations-at-vanderbilt-garrett-tate-lily-claiborne-and-student-analysis-of-real-world-data\/","title":{"rendered":"teaching innovations at vanderbilt: garrett tate, lily claiborne, and student analysis of real-world data"},"content":{"rendered":"

by faith rovenolt, cft undergraduate intern<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

it\u2019s pretty hard to not find volcanoes exciting. that\u2019s part of the reason why i think a new active learning activity in ees-1510: the dynamic earth: introduction to geological sciences, is so cool. the other reason i think it\u2019s amazing is that it represents a great example of an activity that engages student learning. it and the course in general highlight several great practices in the classroom to increase engagement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>dr. lily claiborne<\/strong> teaches the course in the fall and dr. garrett tate teaches it in the spring. tate adapted an activity from getsi<\/a>\u2014geodesy tools for societal issues\u2014and the two recently implemented it in claiborne\u2019s classroom. the activity was originally designed as a gallery walk<\/a>, where students walk around the classroom going from poster to poster with information and questions written by the group ahead of them to collectively solve a problem. tate was introduced to this at earth educators’ rendezvous 2019<\/a>, a conference co-hosted this summer by vanderbilt that claiborne helped organize.<\/p>\n

tate modified the original project<\/a> by kaatje kraft and rachel teasdale, in which students work through several forms of data to perform a risk assessment on a volcano (based on real data from mount st. helens in 2004). tate shortened down the original project and replaced full-sized posters designed to hang on the wall with smaller 11\u201d by 17\u201d handouts. students work with other students to form a group and several groups come together to form a supergroup. each group in a supergroup is given one of the handouts and a packet with background information for one kind of dataset used in the problem. the first group to get each of the handouts writes a summary of the background information in the packet. the handout, and not the packet, is handed to the next group who then examines the new type of data, answers the next question on the handout, and so on and so forth, making each group rely on the information from the group before them to analyze the data and come to a conclusion collaboratively. a tophat poll is then used to determine the results of the students\u2019 analysis\u2014in this case, the risk assessment of the volcano.<\/p>\n

after the poll, students watched a video<\/a> in class on how the real world data was collected and analyzed by the scientists working on it. not only did the students largely come to the same conclusions, but they got to be exposed to the reality of science, in which scientists don\u2019t always know if they\u2019re right. some students expressed frustration because of this, asking how to know for sure if a volcano is a risk. tate and claiborne appreciated this response\u2014it shows that they are exposing students to the reality of scientific decision making, which isn\u2019t always as clear as a lecture might make it out to be. when tate teaches the course in the spring, he is now planning to include a specific discussion to go over this.<\/p>\n

some things that may help other teachers adapt gallery walks or other active learning activities into their larger courses are:<\/p>\n