evolution of an undergraduate service course - how to cope with success of an age of dinosaurs class, The

Journal of Geoscience Education, May 2003 by Montgomery, Homer

ABSTRACT

Facing declining enrollment of geology majors and the unappetizing possibility of becoming a low-enrollment program, many geology departments have reinvented themselves as purveyors of service courses, some as major purveyors. Service courses usually focus on the environment, earthquakes and volcanoes, dinosaurs, the oceans, and so forth. Assuming eventual success with a service course, the next step in the evolution of undergraduate science teaching is not necessarily clear. How does one deal with a course that becomes rather more than mildly successful? Age of Dinosaurs at the University of Texas at Dallas is presently capped at 200 students per semester. A compressed summer version is sometimes offered. These numbers are large for an earth science course that also includes a lab and a major field trip. Classrooms overflow, labs are overwhelmed, field trips unfold like invading armies, and testing methods are inadequate. Alarmingly, cheating can become all but impossible to manage in packed classrooms. Add a burgeoning push for asynchronous instruction and the accustomed course mechanisms are rendered ineffective. What to do? Modify (or abolish) lectures. Change testing styles. Adopt new lab and field trip strategies. By all means, look to web-based course management software for solutions.

Keywords: Education - geoscience; education undergraduate; paleontology - vertebrate; WebCT

INTRODUCTION

The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) attracts an incoming class with the highest SAT scores of any public institution in Texas (data for 2001 provided by the Office of Strategic Planning at UTD). I spend part of my time concerned that I will not be able to properly manage a huge class of bright and somewhat irreverent students. I spend the rest of the time pleased that the management mechanisms we have developed are going rather well. From an initial class of fewer than 20 students six years ago, growth of Age of Dinosaurs has reached an enrollment of approximately 400 students each year in a university that has just more than 13,000 students. Some of the class growth is clearly due to our policy of actively involving students from the course in ongoing research projects that appear in the news (Figure 1). The latest effort occurred during the spring semester of 2001 when Bell Helicopter airlifted the neck of an enormous sauropod out of the desert - one 400 kg vertebra at a time (National Park Service News Release, 2001).

Delivering knowledge to a small group of students is what most of us are used to, especially if the course we are teaching is required for majors. In this case students have no choices. Few regular modifications are required on the part of the instructor as he or she is not selling a product to an audience with options. Such is not the case with elective science courses. Students have choices. Only innovative or, at least, interesting courses survive. How to effectively manage a large course with a somewhat unruly audience of diverse majors is not something many of us learn in the usual course of our careers.

The motivation for this paper is to suggest strategies that make a large service course effective and manageable while not compromising its popularity. I will begin with the ideas of others who offered sound advice about teaching, progress through my experiences with finding space, changing testing methods, managing labs and field trips, and end with points about the web.

MANAGING A LARGE COURSE

Two patterns have been apparent in the development of Age of Dinosaurs. Enrollment has displayed a pattern of steady increase. Methods and techniques for delivering the course display a pattern of near stasis punctuated by large modifications. I realize that every classroom management technique employed in my career must be regularly reevaluated. Lectures, testing, labs, and field trips are all modified in sweeping ways.

Space - I am tempted to say "Space, the final frontier," but it should read, "Space, the initial frontier." As enrollment increases the immediate complications of space are not always easily solved, especially as so many universities have increasing enrollment and classrooms are booked solid from dawn until near midnight. At growing universities your burgeoning course will compete for lecture halls with required chemistry and biology courses. Such courses are entrenched in their rooms and time slots. Nudging out one of these is akin to altering the orbit of a planet with a suggestion. Even if you obtain a suitable hall, your growing course almost always will be relegated to odd time slots, such as 7 a.m. Creative thinking is required.

Assuming you succeed in gaining a larger room, adapting to microphones, long-throw projectors for your laptop, and other necessary technology is not terribly daunting. It will be a relief not having to deliver a class to a pack of sardines that raise the temperature of a room by ten degrees due to collective body heat.

Lectures - Pascal de Caprariis (2000) affirmed that effective courses are based on successful implementation of three components: immediate feedback, two-way communication, and active learning. Active learning is a concept that is cast about but usually is not well executed. Students do most of the work in a well-managed, active learning environment. They do not simply sit there and listen.