An Earth Science Scrapbook Project as an Alternative Assessment Tool

ABSTRACT

A scrapbook, in which students assemble news articles, advertising images, postcards, and other flat items has been developed as an assessment tool for an introductory level Earth Science course for pre-service teachers. The students are asked to locate items that relate in some way to Earth Science and to write a relevant caption for each one that demonstrates something the student has learned in the course. The scrapbook can be used to evaluate the breadth and depth of the students' comprehension of Earth Science concepts. The assignment encourages students to relate course content to the world outside the classroom, and to become aware of the relevance of Earth Science to their daily lives.

INTRODUCTION

One of the challenges of teaching introductory Earth Science, especially in required or core courses, is helping students see the relevance of geology to their lives. Another challenge is finding alternative forms of assessment that encourage students to move beyond memorization of facts (Bond et al., 1994). This article describes a scrapbook project that is used both as a means of demonstrating the connections between geology and students' daily lives and as an alternative form of assessment.

The project was developed for an introductory Earth Science class for middle school and high school pre-service teachers. The course is required for students who have not already had Earth Science course work. The students come from a wide variety of backgrounds: some have had very little science experience; others have a bachelor's degree in science and, in some cases, work experience. This semester-long scrapbook project is an opportunity for the students, who have a wide range of academic and life experiences, to work at their own level. The assignment challenges students to collect items that relate to Earth Science, such as news articles and images in advertisements and travel brochures, that can be assembled into a scrapbook and to write a caption for each item.

"Scrapbooking" is a popular hobby and as such, has found its way into educational settings, primarily in middle and elementary levels. Scrapbooks are primarily used to create connections between children and their families (eg. Naumann, 2000; Yahraus, 2001) but have also been recommended for many other applications including helping children develop humane feelings towards animals (Whitlock and Westerlund, 1975), and for helping children heal from truamatic incidents (Lowenstein, 1995). Collecting newspaper clippings is a common instructional device for helping students to relate course content to current events. It has been used in many educational settings including secondary school social science (Holmes, 1976) and in college humanities classes (Lanham and Cowan, 1990). Written analysis of news clippings provides an even more powerful way to link course material to current events (Rider, 1992). Photo interpretation is another authentic task (Barton, 2001) that helps students make connections between course materials and "real life". (In this context, the term "authentic" is used to refer to learning experiences that incorporate real materials, data or contexts, that require students to perform real-world tasks; this is in contrast to simulated or simplified experiences typical of many traditional educational activities.) Reynolds and Peacock (1998) suggest observing and interpreting natural landscapes using slides in class helps students understand the relevance of geoscience course material and may help with development of spatial visualization skills. Analyzing images found in other formats (e.g. magazines) should have a similar effect and perhaps be even more effective in creating connections for students because the images are found by the students outside the classroom environment.

The project was designed with a number of goals in mind: 1) To make it obvious to students that the Earth is an ever present part of their daily lives and that information about the Earth learned in class can be applied in many familiar contexts. 2) To help the students make connections between course content and news and current events. 3) To catalyze discussion of course materials and to serve as a format for feedback on how course material applies in contexts outside the classroom. 4) To serve as an alternative assessment tool that allows the students to be creative and take ownership of their work while demonstrating what they have learned from the course. 5) To serve as a model for a project that the pre-service teachers could assign their own pupils.

THE ASSIGNMENT

The students are asked to collect news articles pertaining to Earth Science and to find images of the natural world illustrating geologic features or processes, or that otherwise pertain to some aspect of Earth Science. Suggested sources for images include advertising imagery, post cards, vacation pictures, and travel brochures. The students are asked to write a caption for each item, and to provide information about its source. For some classes, I have also required that students link each item to a National Science Education Standards (1996) (NSES) content standards. This provides an opportunity for the students to become familiar with the NSES content standards and how they relate to the geoscience education. (The NSES can be found on the internet at: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books /nses/html/).