Geoscience Education Research
Department of Geosciences
- Curious about what geoscience education is all about? Check out some of the latest Geocognition research group’s (Dr. Karen McNeal) publications about how to develop student spatial thinking skills, what student conceptions are around biogeochemical cycles, or how we measure student engagement in the classroom.
"Geoscience Education Research (GER) involves how people think and learn about Earth at many different scales and in many different environments. Our work takes place in the laboratory setting where research participants come to engage in research studies we have designed; Our work also takes place in the classroom (7-20) where we are often interested in how curricula or pedagogical techniques may influence students' understanding, engagement or affect towards a specific discipline or topic; Our work also occurs outside of formal learning spaces where we may be interested in applying results of the research to a broader audience or use informal science communication efforts. We have several research tools and approaches to help us collect information about how people understand, perceive, and engage with Earth system science content and interventions. At Auburn, we have a dedicated 500+SQFT laboratory for conducting geoscience education research which houses three Tobii Eyetrackers (TX300, two X3-120s, and one set of mobile glasses), 25 Empatica skin sensors, two augmented reality sandboxes, and equipment for video and audio recording. Additionally, we have software to assist our analysis including Dedoose (for qualitative data), Tobii Pro (for eye-tracking), Winsteps (for item analysis in survey development), and students have access to R and SPSS for statistical analyses."
