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

Although our overall assessment is very positive, we had a few difficulties and misgivings, mostly unnoticed by the students. For one thing, because this class was so student-focused, it required giving up a sometimes uncomfortable amount of control. At times I hovered with nothing to do because the students didn't need me in the classroom. On review, I find that I mentioned this problem half a dozen times in my teaching journal, questioning whether I was giving students everything I should. By the end of the semester I felt comfortable with my redundancy, but during the semester I sometimes worried quite a bit.

The biggest problem encountered was time. This problem manifested itself in several ways. First, due to lack of time, I found that I could not cover some material that I originally thought essential to the class. By the end of the semester, I was quite happy with the curriculum, but I had to make adjustments as we went along. Several colleagues have questioned whether T covered all topics that are essential to a Petrology class. I cannot answer this question unambiguously because different people consider different things essential. (At the "Teaching Petrology in the 21st Century" Workshop, a survey of about 100 petrologists, all of whom are committed teachers, revealed no consensus on what was an ideal curriculum.) Additionally, helping students to develop basic thinking skills, and to develop good habits of the mind, may be more important than covering more topics in a course (Tobias, 1990; Dempster, 1993; Nelson, 2001; Fratt, 2002; D'Avanzo, 2003). While I believe I did cover all requisite topics, I still see a need for further assessment to address this question. In particular, I plan to use knowledge surveys (Nuhfer, 1996; Nuhfer and Knipp, 2003) in this class beginning the next time I teach it. Knowledge surveys will allow me to clarify goals and to evaluate whether we are reaching them.

A second time problem involved use of my time. This class required me to commit nearly twice as many contact hours'as I did in past years. It was not possible or appropriate to turn over all lab activities to the TA. Additionally, class preparation required many hours of my work each week, including careful and time-consuming preparation of handouts, samples, microscopes and other things. As much as possible, I intended to introduce and distribute assignments and then stand aside while students performed. This does not mean I "dumbed down" the projects. In fact, the longer class periods and group projects made it possible to investigate challenging topics in great depth, thus promoting higher levels of learning. However, careful planning was required for these projects to be successful. I hope, and anticipate, that the preparation time will be less next time I teach the class.

Few lectures meant that organization and flow of course had to come in other ways. The curriculum needed to mesh well, and projects had to fit together and move the class toward specific goals. If students were to work together in cooperative groups without instructor input for long periods of time, they needed to stay on task. So, assignments and expectations had to be especially clear to students. Despite our best efforts at preparation, individuals or groups occasionally lost focus or became distracted by tangents. We took care to monitor what students were doing because we thought it important to help them stay on task. Yet, in my teaching journal I noted several instances where we may have intervened prematurely. In retrospect, the students might have gained more if we had given them longer to determine their own directions.