Monitoring the Florida River How a class research project took over the labs of Earth Systems Science

Earth Systems Science at FLC Constraints on course design – Intro course for major – Feeds into Historical, Mineralogy, Field Methods – Required or elective for teacher ed – Gen Ed science course with lab – Guaranteed transfer credit in Colorado – Taught by five different people – Same labs for all lecture sections – 50 students per lecture section

Earth Systems Science labs Added in 2000 for new Gen Ed program 14-week semester 4 to 6 sections per semester 25 students per section Mostly traditional sequence of labs Required research project Topo maps Minerals and rocks (3 labs) Local geology (field trips) Weathering Earthquakes Groundwater Oceanography Weather

Changing research project Problems with student-driven research projects –Lack of student background in earth science –Limited time for project –Limited instructor time to advise intro research projects outside lab New equipment (ICP-OES) –NSF-CCLI grant – supposed to be for transforming courses

Durango Animas R Florida R New collaborative project: monitoring Florida River –One or two sites per lab section –Three groups within each lab section (discharge, sediment, water chemistry) –Groups compare data to previous years and other sites Map credit: Dan Newman ‘08

Problems with collaborative project Why are we doing this? Students didn’t choose project. Where are we? Students are along for the ride – didn’t choose location What does it mean? Background research Graphing experience (or not) Results from other groups

…so we expanded the project Week 1: Topo maps lab Week 2: Graph peak monthly discharge by hand (not during lab) Week 3: Graph existing data with Excel (not during lab) Week 5: Background write-up (not during lab) Week 6: Expected results (not during lab) Week 9: Collect samples & data Week 11: ICP analysis (not during lab) Week 12: Share data (not during lab) Week 13: Present & discuss data Week 14: Final paper due

Concepts & skills in project Concepts – River systems: discharge, sediment load – Geochemical cycles: dissolved load and relation to weathering, rock types – Future: rock/geologic history field trips in same area? Skills – Map-reading – Graphing data (hand, Excel) – Quantitative skills (unit conversions, discharge) – Writing – Speaking (Powerpoint presentations)

Does it work? 11 positive “it was cool testing a local river…” 10 needs improvement “It was not as fun as I thought” “Could have been better organized but turned out well” “We could have spent more time actually understanding the process” Most students did not comment Evaluation comments*

Future plans? Revise exercises Assign graphing exercises in lecture? Change other field trip locations to Florida River valley? Revise lecture schedule to fit project schedule? Use project as example in lecture?