A Twenty-Year Look at “Computational Geology,” an Evolving, In-Discipline Course in Quantitative Literacy at the University of South Florida

Since 1996, the Geology (GLY) program at the USF has offered “Computational Geology” as part of its commitment to prepare undergraduate majors for the quantitative aspects of their field. The course focuses on geological-mathematical problem solving. Over its twenty years, the course has evolved from a GATC (geometry-algebra-trigonometry-calculus) in-discipline capstone to a quantitative literacy (QL) course taught within a natural science major. With the formation of the new School of Geosciences in 2013, the merging departments re-examined their various curricular programs. An online survey of the Geology Alumni Society found that “express quantitative evidence in support of an argument” was more favorably viewed as a workplace skill (4th out of 69) than algebra (51st), trig (55th) and calculus 1 and 2 (59th and 60th). In that context, we decided to find out from successful alumni, “What did you get out of Computational Geology?” To that end, the first author carried out a formal, qualitative research study (narrative inquiry protocol), whereby he conducted, recorded, and transcribed semi-structured interviews of ten alumni selected from a list of 20 provided by the second author. In response to “Tell me what you remember from the course,” multiple alumni volunteered nine items: Excel (10 out of 10), Excel modules (8), Polya problem solving (5), “important” (4), unit conversions (4), back-of-the-envelope calculations (4), gender equality (3). In response to “Is there anything from the course that you used professionally or personally since graduating?” multiple alumni volunteered seven items: Excel (9 out of 10), QL/thinking (6), unit conversions (5), statistics (5), Excel modules (3), their notes (2). Outcome analysis from the open-ended comments arising from structured questions led to the identification of alumni takeaways in terms of elements of three values: (1) understanding and knowledge (facts such as conversion factors, and concepts such as proportions and log scales); (2) abilities and skills (communication, Excel, unit conversions); and (3) traits and dispositions (problem solving, confidence, and QL itself). The overriding conclusion of this case study is that QL education can have a place in geoscience education where the so-called context of the QL is interesting because it is in the students’ home major, and that such a course can be tailored to any level of program prerequisites

Framing Geologic Numeracy for the Purpose of Geoscience Education: The Geoscience Quantitative Preparation Survey

The Geoscience Quantitative Preparation Survey (GQPS) was developed to address a deficiency in the available literature regarding the competency and preparation of early-career geologists in geoscience job-related quantitative skills – namely, geologic numeracy. The final version of the GQPS included self-confidence, usage, satisfaction, and demographic sections. The GQPS was expected to produce data that would allow for an evaluation of the geologic numeracy of early-career geologists and the success of approximately 20 years of increased focus on quantitatively literate geoscience graduates. The self-confidence section of the GQPS included quantitative methods and quantitative skills. The usage section asked whether participants used methods or skills from the confidence section in both work and non-work settings. Satisfaction items asked how satisfied participants were with the quantitative preparation they received as undergraduates, relative to career needs, and included items on quantitative problem solving, quantitative communication, and computers. Limited demographic information was collected including time since bachelor’s graduation, years of related experience, undergraduate alma mater, current job status and field, and highest level of education. Satisfaction values for quantitative problem solving and quantitative communication indicate that respondents were largely satisfied with their undergraduate preparation, with values slightly higher for the geoscience department than for the university as a whole. Satisfaction items related to the use of computers were nearly uniform across all response levels and were not indicative of satisfaction (or any other particular response). Demographic responses indicate it is reasonable to make some generalizations to the overall population of early-career geologists. Early-career geologists in the sample population showed indications of geologic numeracy. This result indicates the educational trend of the last 20 years of focus on quantitatively literate geoscience graduates has had some success, although this focus cannot be compared to prior years due to lack of data. The GQPS was successful for answering its research questions, but requires validation as a complete scale before it is likely to be used by outside parties

Alumni Narratives on Computational Geology (Spring 1997 – Fall 2013)

Recent meetings and publications have discussed what geoscience undergraduates should learn for professional success, and among other items, have identified several quantitative skills and habits of mind as being necessary for geoscience students; many of these items are commonly associated with Quantitative Literacy (QL). The Computational Geology course in the geology department has been evolving at USF for 20 years. The course teaches QL in a geologic setting independent of specific core geology topics. This course has long preceded the national acknowledgment of the need for what it teaches within the field. As the first of a series of related studies intended to find the effect and role of this course within the geoscience community, this thesis study begins as a qualitative narrative inquiry of course and program alumni. In the study reported here ten USF Geology alumni from a variety of career paths who took GLY 4866 between 1997 to 2013 underwent semi-structured interviews recounting their memories of the course, discussing the benefits to them of the course in their careers, and outlining their views of what students should gain from this course for professional success. The interview results illuminate trends that can be usefully grouped by job/career category. Regulators (3) had the shortest overall interview time, remembered the least in terms of specific events from the course, and had limited (but consistent) suggestions for student learning. Their memories and suggestions were also rarely unique. Consultants (3) were the median group in length, and showed overlap in the content of their interviews to regulators, with additional details added. Academics (4) had the longest interview times, the most detailed memories from the course, and the most suggestions, possibly due to these interviewees using similar methods in their later careers as course instructors. Consultants and academics related large blocks of story text that were unique while also relating common statements. Narratives from professionally successful alumni were sought to gain greater detail on the likely impact of Computational Geology than surveys are likely to give. The responses of selected, successful alumni were also sought to help refine questions that are to be used later in surveys of a larger sample population of alumni and to a larger national audience of geoscientists regarding their undergraduate programs and how those programs prepared them with quantitative skills. The information that interview subjects provided about the educational needs for successful entry-level geology professionals were shaped into a series of suggestions for course and program improvement. Course and program improvement suggestions and questions for a proposed survey have been assembled both to improve the GLY 4866 offering at USF for broader dissemination and to contribute to broader discussion of strategies for improving the quantitative skills and learning of geoscientists

Quantitative Literacy in the Affective Domain: Computational Geology Students’ Reactions to Devlin’s The Math Instinct

Building on suggestions from alumni from a recent interview project, students in Computational Geology at the University of South Florida were tasked with reading a popular non-fiction book on mathematics and writing about the book and their feelings about math. The book, The Math Instinct by Keith Devlin, was chosen because we believed it would give the students something interesting to write about and not because we had any expectations in particular about what it might reveal about or do for their math anxiety. The nature of the responses received from the students led to the performance of a post-hoc study on the emotional affect of math in the students' lives and how it changed as they proceeded through the book and reflected back on it at the end. Of the 28 students in the fall 2016 section of the course, 25 had an improved or slightly improved attitude toward math by the end of the semester. The assignment was more successful than we could anticipate at generating thought and getting students to communicate about math – an integral component of quantitative literacy. Although the limited size and post hoc nature of the study make it difficult to generalize, the results are promising and invite further use of the assignment in the course

Review of Developing Quantitative Literacy Skills in History and the Social Sciences: A Web-Based Common Core Approach by Kathleen W. Craver

Kathleen W. Craver. Developing Quantitative Literacy Skills in History and Social Sciences: A Web-Based Common Core Standards Approach (Lantham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2014). 191 pp. ISBN 978-1-4758-1050-9 (cloth); ISBN …-1051-6 (pbk); ISBN…-1052-3 (electronic). This book could be a breakthrough for teachers in the trenches who are interested in or need to know about quantitative literacy (QL). It is a resource providing 85 topical pieces, averaging 1.5 pages, in which a featured Web site is presented, described, and accompanied by 2-4 critical-thinking questions purposefully drawing on data from the Web site. The featured Web sites range from primary documents (e.g., All about California and the Inducements to Settle There, 1870) to modern databases (e.g., city-data.com). The 85 pieces are organized under three headings (Social Science Sites; U.S. History Sites; World History Sites) following three chapters introducing QL, quantitative sources, and communicating with data. The QL skills in the questions are the usual suspects such as making comparisons, graph reading, table reading, and calculating and thinking about ratios. The author, the Head Librarian at the National Cathedral School (Washington DC), clearly aims the book at high school teachers who wish to comply with the Common Core Standards, which call for making communication with data a part of English Language Arts. The authors of this review believe the book will be of great value for college-level teachers too, whether they be interested in finding context (e.g., history and social science topics) for their QL-math courses, or adding QL-type questions to their in-discipline courses. Moreover, we fervently wish that this book will inspire others to create and compile similar resources in such a way that, in the future, there will be a vast open-access library of such collections of QL questions coupled to data sources – with updated links – available on the Internet

A Twenty-Year Look at “Computational Geology,” an Evolving, In-Discipline Course in Quantitative Literacy at the University of South Florida

Since 1996, the Geology (GLY) program at the USF has offered “Computational Geology” as part of its commitment to prepare undergraduate majors for the quantitative aspects of their field. The course focuses on geological-mathematical problem solving. Over its twenty years, the course has evolved from a GATC (geometry-algebra-trigonometry-calculus) in-discipline capstone to a quantitative literacy (QL) course taught within a natural science major. With the formation of the new School of Geosciences in 2013, the merging departments re-examined their various curricular programs. An online survey of the Geology Alumni Society found that “express quantitative evidence in support of an argument” was more favorably viewed as a workplace skill (4th out of 69) than algebra (51st), trig (55th) and calculus 1 and 2 (59th and 60th). In that context, we decided to find out from successful alumni, “What did you get out of Computational Geology?” To that end, the first author carried out a formal, qualitative research study (narrative inquiry protocol), whereby he conducted, recorded, and transcribed semi-structured interviews of ten alumni selected from a list of 20 provided by the second author. In response to “Tell me what you remember from the course,” multiple alumni volunteered nine items: Excel (10 out of 10), Excel modules (8), Polya problem solving (5), “important” (4), unit conversions (4), back-of-the-envelope calculations (4), gender equality (3). In response to “Is there anything from the course that you used professionally or personally since graduating?” multiple alumni volunteered seven items: Excel (9 out of 10), QL/thinking (6), unit conversions (5), statistics (5), Excel modules (3), their notes (2). Outcome analysis from the open-ended comments arising from structured questions led to the identification of alumni takeaways in terms of elements of three values: (1) understanding and knowledge (facts such as conversion factors, and concepts such as proportions and log scales); (2) abilities and skills (communication, Excel, unit conversions); and (3) traits and dispositions (problem solving, confidence, and QL itself). The overriding conclusion of this case study is that QL education can have a place in geoscience education where the so-called context of the QL is interesting because it is in the students’ home major, and that such a course can be tailored to any level of program prerequisites

Quantitative Literacy in the Affective Domain: Computational Geology Students’ Reactions to Devlin’s \u3ci\u3eThe Math Instinct\u3c/i\u3e

Building on suggestions from alumni from a recent interview project, students in Computational Geology at the University of South Florida were tasked with reading a popular non-fiction book on mathematics and writing about the book and their feelings about math. The book, The Math Instinct by Keith Devlin, was chosen because we believed it would give the students something interesting to write about and not because we had any expectations in particular about what it might reveal about or do for their math anxiety. The nature of the responses received from the students led to the performance of a post-hoc study on the emotional affect of math in the students\u27 lives and how it changed as they proceeded through the book and reflected back on it at the end. Of the 28 students in the fall 2016 section of the course, 25 had an improved or slightly improved attitude toward math by the end of the semester. The assignment was more successful than we could anticipate at generating thought and getting students to communicate about math – an integral component of quantitative literacy. Although the limited size and post hoc nature of the study make it difficult to generalize, the results are promising and invite further use of the assignment in the course

On a Desert Island with Unit Sticks, Continued Fractions and Lagrange

GLY 4866, Computational Geology, provides an opportunity, welcomed by our faculty, to teach quantitative literacy to geology majors at USF. The course continues to evolve although the second author has been teaching it for some 20 years. This paper describes our experiences with a new lab activity that we are developing on the core issue of measurement and units. The activity is inspired by a passage in the 2008 publication of lectures that Joseph Louis Lagrange delivered at the Ecole Normale in 1795. The activity envisions that young scientists are faced with the need to determine the dimensions of a rectangle with no measuring device other than an unruled stick of unknown length – to hundredths of a stick length. Following Lagrange, the students use the stick to measure the lengths with continued fractions, and then they reduce the continued fractions and convert them to decimal form. In the process, these student veterans of calculus instruction learn that as a group they are not very good at the arithmetic of fractions, which they thought they learned in the fifth grade. The group score on a continued fraction item improved from 44% on the pre-course test to 84% on the post-course test in the first semester in which the new lab was included (Fall 2015)

Quantitative Reasoning in the Geoscience Classroom: Modeling Functions and Logarithmic Scales

Have you ever tried presenting graphs to your students only to experience frustration when they look first to the data points, ignoring important information on the graphical axes? Does this frustration lead to a less quantitative presentation of your course—do you leave the graphs (or the math behind them) out entirely? Geoscience courses are often viewed as being qualitative, despite the fact that modern geoscientists practice in a thoroughly quantitative field (Manduca et al., 2008). Enhancing our students\u27 skills and experience in quantitative reasoning in undergraduate geology courses can be difficult, but it is essential if students are to work successfully in the profession after graduation (Manduca et al., 2008; Vacher, 2012). Geoscience courses offer a precious opportunity to present mathematics in context (Wenner et al., 2009), which we cannot let pass us by. Two topics that fit very nicely together, and are quite relevant to geosciences, are logarithmic scales and graphing modeling functions. In this article we discuss a unit from our course, and how it teaches these concepts