Case for a Cooperative Studio Classroom: Teaching Petrology in a Different Way, The

In the weekly meetings with the teaching consultant and in interviews after completion of the course, students said that the studio classroom was successful in promoting learning and that they preferred it to a traditional classroom. For example, during the interviews the following comments were recorded:

"Working with other students is much better than working alone. Not only does it help you understand things, but having responsibility to your classmates means you have to show up and contribute."

"There were so many ways to learn things in this class - if we didn't get it one way, we figured it out another."

The students' overall satisfaction was confirmed by their responses on an Attitudes Assessment (Table 6). For this survey, they ranked a number of factors using a Likert (agree/disagree) scale. Perhaps more significant than their specific responses were the changes between the beginning and end of the semester. This class clearly changed their attitudes about what best promotes learning. At the end of the semester, they gave especially high marks to group problem solving. They gave relatively low marks to textbooks, lectures, individual projects. They acknowledged the need to be present in class and said they learn best when lab and lecture are combined. In post-class interviews all except one student (out of 17) said that the class was challenging, that they did not get enough credit for it, but that they learned a lot while having fun. One student said:

"I worked my tail off in this class but it was fun and I learned more than in any other of my science classes."

From the student perspective, every major aspect of the class was a success.

INSTRUCTOR PERSPECTIVE

My assessment and that of the teaching consultant echoed the students' in most ways. We found the class to be very successful for all the same reasons, and we also found other benefits. In every class session, students were involved in active learning involving thinking, inquiry, creativity and reflection. They "did" and "thought about" science in the way that scientists do, as they developed skill at collaboration and teamwork. Scores on exams and other evaluations suggest that, besides the holistic skills, they learned as much, or more about petrology than students had in previous semesters. The cooperative environment and combined lecture/discussion/lab format allowed us to get students involved in multifaceted investigations that would have been impossible previously.

One unanticipated characteristic of our studio classroom was that the TA and I found it quite easy, and absolutely necessary, to keep track of student progress and success. Due to the nature of the pedagogy and the projects, student-instructor contacts occurred more often and more meaningfully. We could give different students and different groups as much or as little of our time as they needed. If a project appeared very successful, expanding it to promote even greater learning was easy - for just a few students or for the entire class. If a project was not working, we could adjust, perhaps by providing more supporting information. We soon learned that different groups and different individuals worked at different paces. If they mastered one thing, they moved on to something different. If they were struggling, we could give them extra attention. Additionally, because different groups were doing different things, we rarely had problems with students having to wait to use limited resources such as rock samples, thin sections, microscopes, cameras or computers.